


War and Peace In Mind

by Jaune_Chat



Series: War and Peace In Mind [2]
Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst and Humor, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Psychological Torture, Superheroes, Torture, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-31
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 49
Words: 334,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warren Peace had a hard road to get where he was, and dealing with the future is bound to be no easier. With friends at his side, can he learn of his shaded past and find a heroic future?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Origins

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on ff.net spanning from 2006-2008. 
> 
> **Disclaimer:** Disney owns Sky High, I just play in their universe. All original characters and ideas not otherwise owned by Disney belong to the person behind Jaune Chat, and may only be used with permission from same.
> 
> This started as a little vingette on why and how superheroes are so different than other people, and ended up being a long history of Warren Peace and insight into his state of mind. Then it evolved into a small epic. Funny how that happens.
> 
> Thanks to Mr. Rigger of the ff.net community and [BrightEyed Jill](http://brighteyed-jill.livejournal.com) of LiveJournal for betaing different chapters of this!

I've sometimes wondered if I was born to be a hero. Most superkids with superhero parents don't have to think about it; of _course_ they're going to be heroes. There's no doubt in their minds, or at least I never saw any in my first few years at Sky High. Even those people that were first-generation powers, they seemed totally convinced that being a hero was the only logical thing to do. I had doubts. I wanted to be a hero, but I wasn't sure if I could. Heroes aren't supposed to have doubts, were they?

Maybe I'm one of the few people who think about it that way. It's mostly because of my mom; she's a really deep thinker. My mom's Joy Peace, a.k.a. The Peacemaker; she's a powerful empath, and can read, project, and manipulate emotion. She's also one of the most ethical people on the planet. You'd think, given who she is, that I'd have grown up to be the most emotionally well-adjusted kid on the block. Of course I didn't; I have my dad to thank for that.

She tried, she really did, to give me the best life she could considering our circumstances. Mom _did_ have a lot of long talks with me about how people work and how to read people's emotional states in the old-fashioned way, mostly so I would be able to tell what people were really thinking of me. She didn't want me to be hurt by lies. Unfortunately, I didn't get any of her powers; I inherited my dad's, flame throwing and indestructibility.

Most superheroes are tough, able to take a really hard punch or survive being thrown into a dumpster without being hurt too badly. But only indestructible (or invulnerable) ones could easily take going _through_ a wall, or take a super-powered punch without busting their spleen. It helped protect me from casual childhood accidents, but I often wished my indestructibility had extended to my heart or spirit. That way I wouldn't have had to feel as much as I do.

Mom did what she could, but I couldn't have been more than four when I realized people were talking about me behind my back. I wasn't the only kid that didn't have two parents, but I remember people keeping their kids away from me, or pulling them away if they came to play with me on the playground. I remember Mom would sometimes bring me home from the park, set me down with juice, crackers, and Sesame Street, and then close herself in her room for an hour. When I was five, I remember going to her door and listening to it. I could hear her crying, so I opened the door and asked if she was hurt.

She was sitting on the bed, holding a picture frame in her hands, one I never remember seeing around the house. I looked at the guy in it, a guy with glasses, longish curly hair, and a wide smile. He had his arm around someone who looked like my mom, though a lot younger. I was little, but put two and two together.

"Is that my dad?" I asked. I never actually inherited Mom's powers, but sometimes I could be weirdly perceptive, even when I was little. I remember I startled her more than once, as I did that day. Mom started a bit, then smiled through her tears and pulled me onto the bed with her. She hugged me to her side, her long, dark hair mixing in with mine, forming a little tent. I remember sometimes I used to hide in her hair, and I would always tell her that no monsters could find me in there.

"Yes Warren, that's your dad," she said softly, and wiped her eyes with a tissue.

"Did he hurt you?" I asked, looking at the smiling man. I know now that that question must have cut her to the bone, but kids don't know when they shouldn't ask things. Mom knew that too, but it took her several minutes before she was able to speak.

"Yes, he hurt me. Not on the outside, but on the inside. He made me very sad."

"Did he call you names? That makes me hurt on the inside," I asked. Kids sometimes called me names, like "weirdo," or "freak."

"No baby, he never did anything like that. It's just that… he lied to me. You know how I feel about lying," she explained gently. Boy, I knew that lesson, and I knew that lesson but well! Mom _never_ tolerated me lying, not for taking a cookie out of the cookie jar, nor for saying I had washed my hands when I didn't, nor for saying someone else had started a fight on the playground. She punished me particularly hard when I told a lie, and I have _never_ successfully lied to my mom. Trust me, sitting in a corner is really horrible when you're five years old.

At the time, saying he had hurt her because he had lied was enough. But over the next few years, Mom told me all about Dad. She knew that I would probably get super-powers, and she wanted to prepare me if they were his and not hers.

Mom told me Baron and her had met in Sky High, in the drama club. She told me that back when she first got her powers, she trained herself using meditation techniques she learned out of psychology books. She said she had been the biggest control freak in Sky High, because her powers tended to run away with her if she wasn't careful. Once she had been really depressed over how badly she had done on a test, and actually set everyone in the cafeteria crying. Another time she had come to school without getting enough sleep, and ended up feeling the emotions of everyone she came within a few feet of.

She told me that she had to have very strong discipline and control to keep her powers under wraps, and ended up applying that to every aspect of her life. Her clothes had to be pressed just right, her notes had to be perfect, her lunch was always the same, that kind of thing. She said she read a lot, trying to learn about emotion through literature. Joining the drama club was fieldwork, she said.

Mom ended up as a student director, and one of the student actors, Baron Battle, spent a lot of time with her. He was just as interested as she was in studying all the plays and books he could get his hands on, and they became study partners. Mom told me Baron was as much of a control freak in his way as she was, and understood how she could be so anal-retentive, and why. He told her it was because his own power was flame-throwing; he needed that kind of control as well to prevent from hurting anyone accidentally. She said they were dating within two weeks, and were sweethearts through two years at Sky High.

When Mom first told me she used to be a control freak, I actually laughed. Our house wasn't exactly dirty, but Mom had a kind of lackadaisical attitude towards housework. "Dust takes care of itself, we'll just help out every now and then," she would say. I've never seen her wear anything formal or even business casual, and our backyard was always more of a jungle than a garden. But I've seen her picture in the Sky High yearbook; and I think I wouldn't have even sneezed around her back then. She looked like if one hair got out of place her face would crack.

Mom told me Baron both helped support her and loosen her up a bit, helping her stay in control of her powers without having to be in control of the world. She told me that back in those days she rarely used her powers unless it was a dire emergency, and had never actually read Baron's emotions with her powers. Maybe it would have saved her a world of hurt if she had. But then again, she once told me, "Love can be wonderful, but it blinds you, and despite all that's written, it doesn't conquer all."

Mom said she and Baron Battle married right out of high school and spent the next few years in Europe. Baron had family there, and there were always diplomatic incidents that needed The Peacemaker's touch. Baron's own powers were more useful in the destroying of giant robots, battling super villains, and staving off hordes of undead than in repairing diplomatic bridges, so they rarely worked together. I'm guessing, though Mom never actually said, that that was the beginning of the end.

Baron Battle had taken his own name to heart and did some extensive studying of military history, both back before Sky High and now that the two of them were married. Some of the most famous battles in history were fought near their house, and he studied them all. He became a brilliant tactician, and often used old military strategies against his modern foes.

Mom said sometimes he would come home frustrated from one battle or another. Sometimes the countries he was in would let him direct part of their army or police force to help battle a supervillain's evil minions, and he would also "complain" (and here I think she actually meant "rant and rave") about their lack of strategy and tactics, and how their country wasn't training them right at all.

Mom said he started to get obsessed, talking about how people had no idea on how to defend themselves, how today's leaders were weaklings and were going to get their people killed by some two-bit villain, and on and on. I remember Mom confessing to me one night when I was fourteen, crying and begging my forgiveness that she hadn't recognized Baron's obsessions for what they were and stopping him before he committed a crime. She told me she had never used her powers on Baron, not once, and by the time things got bad enough that she wanted to, she couldn't get them to work. She told me that her love for him had blinded her. While Baron may have been obsessed, she said, he also treated her with great love and affection, even when he was raving.

But she said that everything changed when she got pregnant with me. "It was like a door was opened in my powers and my mind. I don't know if it was because you shared both his blood and mine, and you were in me, or I was so fearful of what might happen to you if he would have gotten violent, but I could suddenly use my powers on him." Mom had sometimes tried to explain what it's like to read someone else's emotions, describing it as colors, or sounds, or smells, but it's difficult to quantify such things.

"It was… very complex. I could _see_ how his… morality had just rotted away, replaced with something so cold and clinical. It was like a robot, a thing without compassion or regret. I knew he was capable of doing terrible things without a drop of remorse. But what was almost worse… he still loved me, genuinely loved me. But he wouldn't let me stand in the way of his grand scheme, whatever it was."

That grand scheme, as the whole damn world found out, was to crash a diplomatic summit, murder the world leaders attending, and take over their countries to form a new, perfect nation that could battle the "true villainous threat of the world." Yeah. That's my dad, the modern Hitler. My mom said she was too pregnant to risk trying to fight Baron Battle, and loved him too much to try to stop him. When she knew he was going to do it for certain, she called for help.

"I cannot tell you how I agonized over that phone call. I dream about it sometimes, and I wake up with every muscle in my body clenched tight." She called, and the Commander and Jetstream flew over to take down my dad. They got there too late to save four of the diplomats at the conference, but were able to capture him, which was more than anyone else could have done.

I couldn't work up the courage to ask about that fight directly. Did the Commander ever agonize over the fact that four people died before he was able to take down Baron Battle? Did he even realize that Baron's wife, the Peacemaker, was seven months pregnant with a supervillain's child? I really needed to ask him that someday. I just didn't know if I could ever get the courage to ask him face-to-face.

Mom said that by the time Baron was tried and incarcerated, I had already been born, and they had both signed the divorce papers. While Baron may have managed to crush his own moral center, he wasn't stupid or insane. He knew his wife would never let him have much of a hand in raising his kid, and that the name of Battle had been linked with villainy for all time. The one good thing that perhaps he ever did was to make sure I never bore his name. Of course, I did get saddled with a name that eerily fits my parentage (and sounds like a ridiculously long Russian novel), but I didn't blame Mom for it. She's dead-on about this kind of stuff.

By that time I first powered up, I knew all about my dad, my mom, his crimes, and the fact that my father was such a heinous criminal that the only reason he didn't get the death penalty is because it's really, really hard to kill an indestructible super-being. Kids at my junior high school had been taunting me about having a dad in prison. While they didn't know he was a supervillain, of course, they did know he was a murderer, and I was trash because of it.

Ever since Mom had told me about my dad, I had wanted to make sure I was going to be able to handle myself. The taunts and shoves on the playground suddenly made more sense, but I was more afraid that people might start to make fun of my mom than me. I didn't know that most people already did, usually when I was out of earshot. The Peacemaker's credibility was called into question when Baron Battle was arrested, because how could a person whose power revolved around knowing other people's emotional states not know _immediately_ when he started to become an obsessed psycho? People stopped calling her to intervene in major crises… then minor ones… until she was lucky if she was called to stop a spat between two kids fighting over candy. She went inactive two years after I was born.

But when I was younger, the taunts, insults, and veiled glances were thick and fast around both of us. If I fought, I knew people would just say I had bad blood, so I couldn't let myself be caught. I had to end fights _quickly_ , so I learned how to be strong. I hit the gyms in school, I learned wrestling, kickboxing, and picked up whatever else I could from action films, practicing in the backyard.

The day I first powered up, I was practicing hitting a fencepost padded with old shirts, ducking, dodging, and weaving around it, like it was Ricky Sanderson's ugly face. He had launched the latest set of tricks and pranks on me at lunch, tripping me into dropping my food, and trying to steal my Twinkie, on the justification that, "jail-timer's kids don't deserve stuff this good."

I ducked, dodged, and punched the padded post with my wrapped hands, thinking about how I was going to belt Ricky in the gut on Monday. I got angrier and angrier as I practiced, thinking about how I hadn't deserved what he said, how he didn't know my family. How he was such a smug bastard because his family was rich and his daddy was a lawyer, and his family lived in such a nice part of town in a house nearly as big as the school.

Mom didn't make that much money, working as she did in a flower shop, and only getting part-time superhero pay because she was inactive. Our part of town wasn't that good, our house was small and shabby, and my dad really _was_ in jail, and for something really bad too. The rage just kept building in me, and I could feel the heat building in my hands. That happened sometimes during a good workout, and I didn't pay it any mind, even though they were getting hotter and hotter and hotter. I was going to deliver my knockout punch to Ricky-the-post, when I tightened the muscles in my arms and curled my fingers hard. Fire erupted on my hands, curiously not really hurting, but startling the hell out of me. Instinctually I threw it away, trying to get it off my hands, and the fireball flew into the side of the house. I stared at in for a moment in enraged disbelief.

"Baron Battle's powers were flame throwing and indestructibility. He may have learned to be a good tactician on his own, but he enforced that with his fireballs," I remember my mom saying. I had to practically pry that information out of her, because I _needed_ to know what might happen to me. Mom had been reluctant to talk about it; there was always a distant look of fear on her face when she spoke about it. I wanted to scream at the cruelty of the universe right then when the fire exploded from my hands. Baron Battle's powers were flashy and distinctive, immediately recognizable. _Not only was I his son, I had his own goddamn powers!_ And then sometime in the middle of my angsty internal monologue, I realized the side of the house was on fire.

Cursing loudly, I grabbed the hose and put out the blaze, then cursed again as I realized it wouldn't be dry in time for me to paint it and hide the damage from my mom. What would this do to her? I had her former psycho-husband's powers, not hers. Damn. I ended up taking everything out of the bathroom that could catch on fire and spent the rest of the time until she got home from work trying to work on controlling what I had. I was damned if I was going to accidentally burn her or anything else in the house. We were only renting the place anyway, and I knew I was going to have to paint that burned spot on the back before the landlord came around again.

I wasn't good on control, not really, but I got the message pretty quick that the angrier I got, the quicker and hotter the flames came. Great. I was a rage-fueled flamethrower, the worst possible combination of my dad's powers and my mom's disapproval of negative emotions. She never wanted me to solve my problems through anger or fighting, but I didn't really know any other way. No bully had ever given me a chance to solve my problems through talking. I had taken plenty of hits when I was younger, and my whole campaign of teaching myself how to fight was to prevent that! Now I felt sick, feeling that somehow my desire to fight had triggered these powers.

Even though I would have rather hidden in the bathroom for the rest of the night, I had to tell Mom what happened when she came home that night. She gave me the weirdest look, a combination of pride and regret, but her eyes were wet with tears. She tried to explain that she was glad that I had my powers, that I would be able to a superhero if I wanted. But she was also a little sad that I had my dad's powers. And then she explained why.

"We only agreed on one thing after Baron was put away; that if you inherited his powers, he would show you the basics on how to use them. At least until you get to Sky High," she said softly. "He knows what they _feel_ like to use, what can trigger then, and what kind of damage they can do. If nothing else, he can give you a quick, practical grounding so you don't have any power accidents. I know how you would feel about that." I swallowed hard. Mom knew me very, very well. She knows I would probably rather stick a needle in my eye than meet my dad, but accidentally burning someone or something would be even worse.

Baron Battle may have tried to take over part of Europe to make his own personal kingdom, but I was still his kid, and he had never given up his parental rights to me. He was a murderer serving quadruple life sentence, which meant that under the law he didn't have very _many_ parental rights, and no way to enforce them, but that single agreement between my parents meant I had to meet him face-to-face at least once.

* * *

Two days after I first powered up, Mom and I were escorted into the Solitary Ward of the Metroplex Detention Center for Superpowered Beings. Baron Battle was waiting for us in a special visitor's room. Most of the jail was within a power-suppressant field, but the place was built to withstand a full-power assault from within _or_ without, just in case the fields failed. Also, Baron was wearing a shock-cuff on one ankle that could render him unconscious with a single command word or button press by any prison guard. Joy and Baron's arrangement concerning me had been duly considered, annotated, permitted, and planned almost twelve years before. While they didn't like the idea of Baron Battle giving instruction to me, they also knew that he had never harmed a child, and always played by a certain set of his own rules. So he sat in a suppressant-free room, guarded by four guards wearing insulted suits and armed with shock-rods, but wasn't cuffed or bound.

I was surprised how much he looked like me, and from the look on his face, he was too. I guess he never got pictures of me. His dark hair was bound away from his face tightly, and his face was determinedly neutral. But Mom hadn't been teaching me how to read people for nothing. He was surprised, pleasantly so, but very reserved and controlled. I decided right then and there that I wouldn't try to lie to him. I had a sneaking suspicion he'd not only know, but would probably do something nasty about it.

"So… Warren. I am given to understand this may be the first and only time we'll ever meet. However, if you have further questions after today, your mother and the government permitting, I would be willing to write you letters about your concerns," he said coolly. I gritted my teeth; suddenly furious at him for some reason, but not knowing why. Maybe it was because he seemed so much like the guys at school that teased me and beat me up when I was younger. He had that same arrogant expression they all had.

"Warren, you can say anything you want to your father; don't worry about me being here if you can," Mom said softly to me. She was giving me permission to… bond with him, I think, if I wanted to. She sometimes told me she regretted not having a father figure for me to look up to, and I think in some obscure way she was trying to make up for this now. That just made me angrier.

Back when Mom was telling me about Baron Battle, I had written letters to some superheroes who used to work with my mom when she was respected. I wanted to know more about who she had been as well, and decided I had better go about it obliquely. They told me how great she was, how many terrible things she helped make right just by getting people to overcome their differences and work together. How she had been happy, upbeat, always a moral compass for anyone who needed one. And now here she was trying to let me know it was all right to correspond with my murderous father, because she felt guilty that he had been in jail all my life. I thought of all the times she had locked herself in her room crying, how she sometimes couldn't look me in the face when I smiled, and felt anger swelling within me.

I wanted to scream in Baron Battle's face, _Look what you did to her! She used to fix the problems behind wars with just a few words. I_ know _what she was. You_ ruined _her! You killed her self-confidence, and now it's even worse because I'm more like you than her. You ruined her life and now think you can take over mine?_ I said nothing, but just got angrier and angrier, clenching my fists until my hands burst into flame. I held back from smashing one into his ever-so-superior face by a thin margin, as he looked me over appraisingly. I felt like a cattle being inspected before a slaughter.

"Well then. It seems you got a touch of your mother's powers after all. Mine were always linked to a few deliberate actions and thoughts… but yours seem to be linked to your emotions. Clenching your muscles, that seems to help activate it, yes?" he said calmly, not even blinking at the intense heat I was generating. Slowly, he took me through every moment of when I first powered up, dissecting what motions, what thoughts triggered my powers. He talked about the motions that he needed to make, letting me try as he suggested one thing after another. I eventually just started to think of him as one of the teachers at school, because that was a hell of a lot easier than trying to remain calm with thinking of him as my dad.

"You may want to think about going out for baseball. If you're going to use your powers-" _for world domination?_ I thought cynically. "-extensively, you're going to be throwing a lot of fireballs. You're obviously already well on the track of straight hand-to-hand combat, but I tended to throw a lot like a baseball pitcher." I actually blinked at that. Huh. That was a radically normal suggestion for a guy that tried to take over the world. Over the next hour I tried out some throws, hitting my fireballs against a wall while Baron critiqued. I reluctantly admit I learned a lot, but it was like twisting a knife in my gut when I saw my mother's face when she watched us together. I immediately promised myself that I would never write to him, not once, and I would never come back. Mom looked as if she were never going to see me again.

When the guards arrived to escort us back out, Baron sat back down again, and waved genially as the door opened.

"He looks just like me, doesn't he Joy?" he commented idly to Mom. "Warren, take care of her. Make sure you make something of yourself, boy. Make the Battle family proud someday." I clenched my jaw hard and turned my back on him deliberately. Bastard. How _dare_ he say that? There was no "Battle family." Just Mom and me. That's it.

* * *

The next two years were hard on both of us. I couldn't enter Sky High until I was fourteen, so I had two years of concealing my powers and learning how to control them at the same time. I was also determined to never have the principal or any teacher call my mom at home for anything, _particularly_ anything involving my powers. That one visit with my father seriously screwed her up, and I never wanted to be the cause of any more worry to her.

I buried myself in schoolwork and got an after school job at a Chinese restaurant bussing tables to bring in a little extra money. I worked under the table until I could legally be employed there, but the owners didn't mind the extra help, no matter my age. I didn't get involved with bad crowds. Or good crowds. Or any crowds to tell the truth. And I never got in another fight on school grounds as part of that promise to myself. It was lonely, hellishly lonely, and if hadn't been so angry at the world for dealing me such a bad hand, I might have been severely depressed.

I took on a real tough-guy appearance to keep people at a distance, wearing leather and black, getting tattoos on my wrists, and wearing my hair long. When parts of my hair started turning red, apparently as a side affect from my powers, I just added that to my persona. It was all very deliberate, as I knew Baron Battle had been a very straight-laced, conservative type of person, at least until he went insane. I already looked a lot like him, but there was plenty I could do to distance myself from him. I cultivated an aura of menace, a touch-me-not attitude that kept the people who used to taunt me at bay. And that worked on keeping people away, perhaps too well, right up until my junior year at Sky High.

Sky High was both better and worse than regular school. I could admit my powers openly, but everyone knew whom they came from. I could use them, but I tended to scare people with them, and not always intentionally. Energy powers were always a little unpredictable, and with me even more so because of the additional pressure I was under.

Here, people not only knew my dad was in jail, but that he was a psychotic supervillain to boot. I didn't need an aura of menace here; people parted before me in the halls and never sat near me in lunch. But I knew the rumors. Most kids brag about their parents' superhero exploits the way other kids talk about their favorite actors or singers. More than one of their parents had been in my dad's class, and they warned their kids about me. But my junior year I heard the worst rumor at all. Will Stronghold, son of the Commander and Jetstream, the people who had put my dad in jail, was coming to Sky High.

I hated him on sight. He was a preppy suburbanite, rich, privileged, with two loving, powerful, famous, super-powered parents. He obviously thought he was pretty damn special too, with his group of friends trailing around with him, and a redheaded hippie chick practically hanging all over him. He reminded me of Ricky Sanderson. It didn't take more than two weeks into school when everything came to a head.

There were two guys in school who had tried to get me onto their side since our freshman year, Lash and Speed, the school bullies. Both had superhero parents, but were past masters at not being caught, or acting like perfect angels when they were. While their powers were easily as Hero class as mine were, they thought my power was the height of cool and constantly tried to get me to display it. I wasn't going to be their damn dog-and-pony show, and I had no interest in beating up on smaller or younger kids. By that time I was tall and strong enough that they couldn't intimidate me physically at all, so they had fallen to mostly ignoring me. Or so I thought.

I was at my own table, reading, and concentrating really hard on keeping people away. Girls seemed to really like me now for some inexplicable reason, and I had to be extra careful to not encourage anyone. There was no one in Sky High I wanted to know at the time, least of all any well-meaning girl who would take me on as a "project," intending to crack my brooding shell.

Then a plate full of food scattered across my table, and somebody took a nosedive right near my bench. I knew it was Stronghold without even turning around. I just knew it. I whirled on him as he pushed himself up and tried to apologize.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking sheepish and wiping his hands on his shorts.

"You will be," I said, with deadly menace in my voice. Some little part of my brain was trying to point out it probably wasn't his fault. He was a damn Sidekick, everybody knew it, he was a failure to his family, and Lash and Speed made a living out of tripping Sidekick freshmen. But a much large part of my brain was on fire with anger. He looked just like the kinds of preppy jerks that used to be on my case when I was younger, and he _knew,_ he had to know, what his dad had done to mine.

"Look, let's not do this," he started to say. A red mist began to fog my vision at that point. He was just trying to handle me, assuming he could be all cute and morally superior just because of who he was. Two years of suppressing my anger towards guys like him had taken their toll, and I was dancing on a very thin edge of control.

"You think you can do anything you want just because your name's Stronghold?" I demanded, rage building in my mind and heat building in my hands.

"Look, I'm sorry my dad put your dad in jail but-" I cut him off by grabbing the front of his shirt as seventeen years of frustration came to a head in a single sentence. He had to have said it in front of the entire damn cafeteria, in front of half the people at Sky High. Now everyone knew, and knew it out of the mouth of someone who apparently had the authority to speak.

"Nobody talks about my father," I snarled, as flames flared. Will looked startled and afraid and leaped back as I broke my grip, as the crowd erupted into cheers of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Somewhere inside I was a little startled myself. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do to him, but right now he was the focus of everything that was wrong in my world, and all I wanted to do was strike back.

A fireball flared in my hand as he grabbed a lunch tray as a shield. His shield was gone in an instant as I hit dead center. More fire flared and I began to throw more fireballs as he ducked and dodged. Walls started to burn, students scattered, and I destroyed part of the lunch line as he turned and ran towards the fire alarm on the far wall. I saw something snaking through the crowd along the floor; a black and white striped arm of impossible length. Lash, wanting to "help," of course. And then I knew who had tripped Will in the first place. But at that point I didn't even care.

Will took a header to the floor, squirming around to look at me. He looked terrified, and I had a sudden mental image from his point of view. I must look like a demon. _I'm everything they said I was going to be._ Sick rage flared again and flames licked up past my elbows as I threw a huge, two-handed fireball at a lunch table as he scrambled underneath. I dashed for it and leapt on top, throwing fireballs on either side to keep him penned in as I herded him towards the end.

"Where's your sidekicks, Sidekick?" I yelled as I got to the end of the table, almost obscurely pleased that his friends had abandoned him. Now he knew what it felt like to have no one.

"Right here!" "Yeah!" A few voices rang out as a group of four freshmen pushed to the front of the crowd. A tall blonde kid in Day-Glo colors, a short, nerdy-looking black kid in orange, a smaller, black-haired grunge-punk girl with purple streaks in her hair, and the red-haired hippie chick, all of them looking determined to start something. _Fine, they can all go down with him!_ I flamed up hard, the fire going most of the way up my arms, trying to intimidate them into backing down, and the nerdy kid melted into a puddle. If the situation hadn't been so serious I think I would have laughed.

"Leave them alone!" Will yelled from underneath the table. With a superhuman effort, he heaved, and I suddenly found myself another seven feet in the air, with little Will Stronghold holding both me and the cafeteria table with no discernable effort. I was so startled I lost my flames.

"He's strong!" the hippie exclaimed.

"I'm strong?" Will replied from underneath me, sounding as surprised as I was.

"He's super-strong," corrected Gwen Grayson. _He just got his powers right now? Damn._ This was shaping up to be a repeat of history, Baron Battle's son versus the Commander's son. _Place your bets now!_ Some hysterical part of my brain was making stupid comments as Will gave a huge heave. I found myself flying through the air, making face-first contact with a concrete rafter, and then crashing fifteen feet below to break a table. I didn't even have time to try to break my fall. I heard cheering and clapping at Will's move, and more anger began to fill me. _They're cheering for him._

It took me a few seconds to recover, blessing my indestructibility for the first time in my life. Anyone else would have been down for the count, or dead, after that kind of treatment. It didn't make it hurt any less though. He was facing away from me when I pushed myself out of the wreckage, and I spied Lash hanging from the ceiling, and Stronghold being congratulated by his little sidekick groupies. _Oh, so you think you're done with me and now you're going to go beat up on the bullies that tripped you and bask in the admiration of your friends?_ I thought. _You would have done the same thing in his position,_ my brain pointed out. I told it to shut up. I wasn't going to be put down so easily, not by him.

"Stronghold!" I yelled, and let the rage-fueled flames erupt along my arms. The crowd screamed and cleared out from around me. I felt something in my chest twist in pain, but shoved it aside. Will tentatively put up his dukes like he was in some kind of boxing match. I lunged for him, ducked the first punch, and then Will landed the second in the middle of my chest, just out of pure luck. He sure didn't know how to fight very well, but he was more than strong enough to make up for it; it felt like getting hit with a train. I went flying the entire length of the cafeteria, through two walls and into a pillar in the teacher's lounge. Coach Boomer and Mr. Medulla both looked at me in utter astonishment as I pushed myself out of the remains of the pillar and stalked back into the cafeteria.

"You think I can't take a hit?" I roared. I clenched my arms and let out a yell as the flames erupted not only along my arms but across my back as well. It felt like my whole body was on fire, and right then I felt as if I could burn the world if I wanted to. The crowd scattered again, and even Stronghold's buddies ran from him. I began to sprint towards Will, only to see with dismay that one of his friends had tossed him a fire extinguisher. If I could just reach him before he could trigger it, I could get him, I knew it. I ran as hard as I could, launched myself into the air… only to be sprayed with the entire contents of the can as Will stopped me cold.

I rolled over and was going to push myself up to keep fighting, and came face-to-toe with Principal Powers' shoes. Mentally I swallowed, because I knew that she was going to have to call my mom. And now I had broken a promise I had made to myself to never have that happen, to never cause her any more worry. If Principal Powers hadn't been right there I would have slugged Will out of pure frustration. She gestured for both of us to follow her, and I kept my hands down as she led us to the detention room, trying to get my temper back under control and not succeeding very well. Inside the place was like a futuristic lab, bright, white, and sterile-smelling.

"I didn't even do anything, he started it," Will whined as Principal Powers followed us inside. My temper snapped; the red mist fogged my eyes again, and now I didn't even care if the Principal was present.

"Your dad started it, but I'm going to finish it," I snarled, and clenched my arms to flame up. There was an odd clicking sound somewhere… then nothing. Trying again, I got the same result.

"Don't bother. The Detention Room neutralizes all super powers. Sit," she said, pointing to a pair of desks. I sat, glowering at her, Will, and the world in general. "Here at Sky High we try to teach you everything we can about how to use your powers. But what you do with them, that's up to you. Living up to your father's reputation, or trying to live it down is a sad waste of talent, _your_ talent. Keep that in mind the next time you're about to do something stupid." With that, she turned and walked out, leaving me alone with Will.

The Detention Room might neutralize all super powers, but I still could take on Will in a straight fight. Then it began to hit me, really hit me, what I had done, what my mom was about to hear, and what she might think. The adrenaline of the fight just ran out of me and I found my mind starting to focus on what was going to happen when I got home. Then Will sighed and dropped his hands on the desktop.

"Look, whatever happened between our dads, it has nothing to do with us. What d'ya say?" he said fairly cheerfully, sticking out a hand to shake. Most of my anger was gone, being replaced with brooding, but I was still angry at him for just trying to think he could fix _anything_ this bad with a few words, a gesture and a smile.

"I say," I said, not even looking at him, "if you _ever_ cross me again, I'll roast you alive." Will's hand stayed out for a long moment, a look of blank astonishment over his face, before sliding his hand back to his desk. I had regretted the words the minute they were out of my mouth. Baron Battle _had_ roasted his four victims alive, but I wanted to do was to say something, anything, to keep him from every talking to me again.

I was a psychotic menace, I was everything they said I was going to be, and even yuppie dorks like Will didn't deserve what I was going to do to him. Besides, if he really had super strength, I really couldn't do a lot to hurt him anymore. Super strength and flight were two of the most powerful powers, and I knew that Will could probably beat me pretty easily now. But he didn't have to know that. I had enough enemies already.


	2. Confessions

Mom was waiting for me when I got home from detention. Taking the late bus home, I had plenty of time to think about the cafeteria fight, and each step I took from the bus stop to the house was putting my stomach into a knot. "It's the curse of the Peace family bloodline," my mom once told me. "Back to my great-great-grandmother, in fact. Even if you didn't actually get emotional powers, you tend to _feel_ them, to think about your feelings, to know what others are feeling. We just feel things very deeply, we Peaces. Sometimes too deeply." Damn. She was right.

And now Mom already knew what I had done. Principal Powers had told her, and told her whom it was with, and even sent her the video from the cafeteria so she could see for herself. So now she would have seen Stronghold being tripped by a bully and me going psychotic. I think I would have rather stuck needles in my eye, stepped in front of a bus, or had a five-course dinner with my dad than face my mom with a guilty conscience.

She was standing in the living room when I got home, her arms outstretched to me, an expression too complicated to decipher on her face. Suddenly I was four years old again, wanting her to protect me from monsters. Except this time the monster was me. I lost it entirely, flinging myself into her arms and starting to cry. She hugged me tightly and pulled me to the sofa, draping her hair over my head like she used to when I was little.

Sometime when I was about eight or so, Mom had once told me, "I know how guilty you feel when you've done something wrong. And I know you punish yourself for it. So only you can decide when you've punished yourself enough for what you've done." Some kids might have taken that as a free license to screw off whenever they wanted to, but for me… I would have never taken that lightly. Like Mom said, I feel things too much.

I remember thinking what the other kids at school would have thought if they could see me right now. Big bad Warren Peace, crying in his mommy's arms. But then again, none of them had tried to kill someone today, had they? In between sobs I told her the whole story, how it had been all my fault, how angry I had gotten, how I had even tried to power up in the Detention Room.

"I tried to kill him, I tried to kill him," I repeated over and over. I admit, I was hysterical. Powering down after something big like that sometimes can make me have a big reaction. I've never asked anyone else if they feel that way, but then again most kids haven't tested their powers to the limits before. The only time most of them might ever go until they're power-exhausted would be in gym class, not the cafeteria.

I don't know how long it was, but I think it was nearly an hour before Mom started talking to me.

"It was because he mentioned Baron," she said, making it a statement. If I said anything, I think I was going to break down again, so I just nodded. "I know you've been bottling all that up inside Warren. For years and years I watched you just bury it all inside you, pushing it down, putting it away. You've tried to deal with it with little fights against those horrible bullies." Here I felt a flush of shame. She knew about my clandestine fights off school grounds when I was younger. Why did I even bother trying to hide anything from her?

"But you've never let your feelings just _go_ before. And I should have done something about that Warren. I should have helped you long ago, instead of hiding behind my own fear. I didn't want to use my own powers on my son… I thought it would hurt you. But I've hurt you more just by not acting. And that's what got me into trouble with Baron. I refused to act; I didn't want to do anything for fear of doing the wrong thing. I can't do that anymore. I could feel your pain radiating from the bus stop. I know you think you're becoming a menace, that you tried to kill Will, but you are also radiating remorse, disgust, and grief for that. You _know_ it's wrong, you know it deep in your bones. You had a terrible scare today, you know now what can happen when both your temper and your power gets out of control. Warren, the worst has already happened, and the only things that got hurt were a few walls and a lunch cart."

I slowly raised my head and pulled back to look at her. I had never heard her talk so… _assertively_ before. I had often thought of my mom as a kind of weeping flower, she even talked like she was on a knife-edge of tears most of the time. But now she sounded so certain of herself and what she was saying, and it made me want to believe her too. It didn't hurt that I knew she was right. But as I raised my head, I had to take a double take. I hadn't paid any attention to what Mom was wearing when I came in, but now I noticed, and it startled me. She was wearing what looked like a long white dress, with patterns of feathers sewn into it, and a wreath of silver leaves on her long, dark hair. Feathered dress… silver _olive_ leaves. It came to me in a flash when I remembered looking over some old newspaper articles. This was my mother superhero costume! The white-feathered dress, like a dove, with a wreath of silver olive branches was the Peacemaker's signature.

"Mom?" I asked tentatively, and she smiled.

"Warren, it's time I stopped letting people make me pay for the mistakes of my past. I lost a lot of credibility when Baron Battle was put in jail, and I let people force me out of a job I loved and did well because I thought I deserved it. You've just shown me, rather forcefully, why I used to do why I did, and why I liked it. I helped people so they didn't have to fight, or only fought the fights that really _needed_ to be fought. I helped them with their feelings, so they didn't have the repressed rage or shame boiling inside, waiting to go off at any moment." I froze for a moment, not really sure what was going on consciously, but hoping against hope that my instincts were right.

"I want to help you Warren. I want to use my powers to help you, because I know right now that you're so sickly afraid that if _anything_ happens between you and Will again, you're going to react with a killing stroke before your brain can tell you no," she said calmly, though her arms were still around me. My guts turned to ice at those words, because she had just said aloud things that I could barely articulate, but could still feel, and strongly at that. "You picked a fight with a kid that represented the bullies you've dealt with for the past seventeen years, and you couldn't finish it. Not only did the kids at school run screaming from you, but Will _humiliated_ you in front of everyone."

I had to purposely slow my breathing, as I could feel that sick rage boiling up in me again, and my skin started to heat up. It _had_ been humiliating, and if anyone in the cafeteria had dared to laugh after Will had sprayed me with the fire extinguisher, I may have gone totally ballistic. Mom touched my hand, and I suddenly felt the rage begin to subside. She put a gentle but instant hand under my chin and turned my head to look her in the eyes.

"I need your permission. I've told you how this works. It doesn't change who _you_ are; it doesn't change your personality. It gives you more control over how you react, so your brain has time to figure out what's going on before you lash out at someone. It makes it so _you're_ in control of you, instead of your rage being in control. You might not even notice any difference, except… things that might have made you only annoyed don't even bother you, things that would make you angry only make you annoyed, and things that would have put you in a killing rage only make you angry. It's a flexible net, to keep you from diving into the deep end. It's not permanent… but by the time it wears off you've had time to work it through on your own."

I took a couple deep breaths while I thought that over. Mom had only ever used her passive powers on me before, reading my emotional state mostly. I knew she could let other people feel what she felt… or actually manipulate another's emotional state. She had done that for people who were fighting wars, getting them to see reason instead of simply fighting for an endless round of revenge. She had helped forge treaties, trade agreements, border disputes, everything from world-shaking events to intervening between a company and a union, or two quarrelsome neighbors arguing over a yappy dog. She had met and helped hundreds, even thousands of people, to see that they didn't have to be upset or angry all the time. Why should it be so different if she wanted to do it to me?

"If I can help you, if you want me to, then I think I'll have the confidence I need to get myself back on the active list. And I don't care if they only call me for little things at first; I'm not going to let that stop me. I just need to know I can still do this," she said softly, pleading entering her eyes. I sucked in a sharp breath. I had wanted my mom to go back to being an active superhero for years, but I never had any idea of what to say to convince her to do so. She had _loved_ that job and had been great at it. More than once I had found her in front of the TV, crying during a news broadcast, probably thinking that if _she_ had been there, than whatever they were reporting, a bombing, an unprovoked attack, a war, wouldn't have happened. If I were the only one she really needed permission from… And I think I would have done anything at that point to keep from feeling that sick rage again. I nodded finally and closed my eyes, and Mom clasped both my hands.

I felt a faint cool rush, but otherwise nothing. "Let me tell you something about Will's parents," Mom said casually. My eyes flew open again, startled at the change in subject, but Mom's eyes were still closed, and there was an expression of fierce concentration on her face. "Steven Stronghold was a second-generation superhero, _his_ father was The Steel Fist, Defender of the Weak. He had a lot to live up to, and a very proud family lineage behind him. He could have been a bully very easily, but he despised them and avoided them. He had a strong sense of ethics drummed into him by his father, and never compromised on those. He wasn't perfect of course, he's something of a power-snob; never would socialize with the Sidekicks. And Josie DeMarco… well, _her_ mother was Silverhawk. Not a very well-known superhero, but Josie was very determined to make her own way, and got top grades in Superhero Ethics and Responsibility."

I smirked inside at that. Trust my mom to remember people's grade from that particular class. Then again, she had probably been the TA by her sophomore year. "I know that between the both of them, Will is bound to be an ethical and responsible kid. He's _not_ going to be a bully, and now that he knows how sensitive you are about your dad, I can guarantee he'll never mention him again. A real bully would probably ride you about that until you did something unforgivable to him," she pointed out. Already I knew her powers had to be working, because while those words triggered guilt and anger, they weren't so all consuming. I could still _think_ while I was feeling, and that was something new.

"I'm not saying you have to try to be friends with Will, but that he won't _make_ himself your enemy unless you give him a great many reasons to. He has a cheerful personality, and it would take a lot to hurt him…" she paused for a moment, and raised an ironic eyebrow, "emotionally. But probably less than it would take to hurt him physically. Especially now." I snorted at that as Mom gently took her hands away from mine. I took another deep breath, closed my eyes, and began to run the fight in the cafeteria fight over in my mind. It was if I could actually _see_ what I was doing, instead of just feeling it. It still made me mad, but now I no longer felt like marching over to Stronghold's house and setting it on fire.

I opened my eyes again and saw my mom smiling at me. I started to smile back, feeling like I had just won a prize of some kind. "Hey Mom, give 'em hell at the office on Monday," I told her. We both managed to be serious for about another two heartbeats, but then we started laughing together until we cried.

* * *

Mom had been right about her "Peacemaker's touch." It didn't really seem to affect me much, other than the fact that I no longer wanted to roast some idiots alive on a daily basis. Ignoring them was easier, both because I didn't have to sustain my anger when I was trying to do something else, and in the fact that they apparently still _thought_ I was, but going about it more subtlety, and avoided me like the plague. Both suited me fine.

The week after the cafeteria fight, however, was the biggest test of my "new" temper. Today was Save the Citizen in gym class, a game favored by the teachers, the students, and Coach Boomer equally, but for different reasons. The teachers liked it because it was a good kind of "practical" experience for fighting other super-powered people, despite the artificiality of the setting. The students liked it because it was a place to beat the snot out of people you didn't like in a school-sanctioned way. Of course, others hated it for the exact same reason. And Coach Boomer liked it because he got to play God over the rest of the students. There were technically supposed to be fouls called for various things during the contest, but Boomer rarely called them. Most fouls in Save the Citizen were for excessive force, because the game wasn't supposed to be about injuries. However, Boomer wasn't above letting some bonehead come away with an injury to "remind" them of how they had failed. In retrospect, that's probably a good idea.

Speed and Lash were the reigning champions this year, as they had been for every year since they came to Sky High. Those two had apparently been friends since childhood, and had whole lot of attack plans worked out to win. They also preferred being the villains in this game. Being villains was actually a whole lot easier, because a hero had to get the citizen from above the mulcher, while the villains just had to prevent them. Hell, the villains didn't even have to do anything if they didn't want to. They could win by default if the heroes couldn't figure out how to get the citizen, and once they had won by not even moving a muscle, because the heroes they were fighting were so hopelessly idiotic that time had run down before they could come up with a plan. Oh, did I forget to mention that there's a large student betting pool on Save the Citizen? Yeah, those two cleaned up on that one.

The two bullies were in fine form; having won two matches already today, both without breaking a sweat. They had mostly chosen sophomores or weaker juniors, but I knew they were working themselves up for something. I bet they just wanted to get the kinks out before going after their chosen prey. After the second citizen of the day had been shredded into sawdust, they tipped their hand.

"All right, who do you want to beat next?" Coach Boomer asked, after they had chosen, without surprise by anyone, to be villains again.

"We'll take little Stronghold…" Speed mused thoughtfully, as Will started to get up, looking worried. "And…"

"We pick Peace!" Lash finished. I was sitting alone in the gym stands, as usual, and got up with ill grace. Lash was hoping for a repeat of the fight in the cafeteria, and I was very much disinclined to oblige him. If my brain had been working properly last week, _he_ would have been the one I was fighting with. I didn't play Save the Citizen that much, but I hoped a few fireballs would knock Lash and Speed off their feet long enough for me to figure out how to save the citizen. I ducked down to the locker room, changing out of my gym clothes and into the body stocking and armor while they game floor was set up. Will was in there too, looking a little pale, and fumbling with the buckles on his body armor while I ignored him. He'd better have figured out how to use his super-strength better in the week he'd had it, or this was going to be a really short match. Speed and Lash might be a pair of bullies, but they were undefeated at this game for a reason. I wasn't looking forward to this… Then the buzzer sounded, signaling the floor was ready, and we had to go.

As we stepped out on the gym floor, Coach Boomer started laying down the rules. "Hothead, Stronghold, you're the heroes." Boomer was the only person I would let get away with a nickname like that, and only because he was a teacher. Maintaining that scrap of dignity by starting a fight with him wasn't worth it. Will was barely paying attention to Boomer, his gaze focused on someone in the stands behind me. I flicked my gaze over and saw Gwen Grayson waving and smiling at him, and whipped my head around to see Will doing the same.

"Hey!" I snapped, "Get your head in the game." Will abruptly dropped the smile and tried to look serious. Freshman. Honestly.

"You have three minutes to immobilize your opponents, and save the citizen," Boomer went on, raising his stopwatch as we got ready. "Ready. Set. _Battle!_ " he boomed the last, and the timer started. Speed and Lash were grinning too damn much, and I knew we were being set up. Will and I really had no strategy, we had never worked together before, and they were probably hoping I'd just turn and start flaming the kid. I still didn't like him that much, but I wasn't going to purposely lose to the school bullies just to humiliate Stronghold. As my mom had said, I didn't have to be friends with the guy, and while I wasn't going to kill him, I wouldn't mind him getting taken down a peg or two. But it wasn't going to be today.

The battle floor for Save the Citizen is set up with obstacles like a city park, lampposts, a newspaper dispenser, a bench, mailbox, payphone, and a dumpster, giving some people the options of hiding, throwing, burning, morphing into, or otherwise use things that should be there in the real world. Of course, a slippery wooden gym floor, bright gym lights, and a barrier of reinforced duriglass didn't exactly build a sense of verisimilitude. If Will did manage to punch Speed or Lash, I would _want_ them to go through two or three rooms. See how they like it for a change.

Lash stretched out one arm from one end of the gym to the other, hanging onto a lamppost, while Speed leaned back like it was a giant slingshot. Before I could even realize what they were up to, Lash snapped his arm forward, and Speed was off like a human pinball. I couldn't even see Speed as more than a blur, and he whipped by both of us, knocking us both flying. I crushed the newspaper dispenser when I landed, and when I looked up; Stronghold had been bounced off the safety wall. And it looks like he was finding out that neither super-strength nor indestructibility would save you from pain. I tossed the remains of the dispenser over the barrier, not wanting to trip over the damn thing.

Lash stretched out both arms across the gym and got me bound up before I could power up.

"Hah! What now, Peace?" he asked, an arrogant smirk on his face. _What, he thinks I need to be able to move my arms to power up? Your mistake, Lash._ I let the heat build up quickly and flared it along my arms, flames illuminating my face as Lash yelped and whipped his arms back to their normal length.

"Hey coach, that's a foul! Call something on that" he yelled to Boomer. But Boomer only chucked a bit cruelly and let the match go on. I knew Lash's stretchy body made him resistant to most blows, and he healed pretty fast too, so any scorching I gave him wasn't going to leave any lasting impression. Pansy. Bullies never like feeling pain themselves.

On the other side of the gym, Speed was running interference with Will, whizzing by him every few seconds, knocking him down, sprawling, or spinning each time he tried to go for the mulcher. It was actually pretty smart of Speed, because if Will could get even one finger on him, he could probably end this match pretty quickly. Someone was howling about how that was a foul, but Boomer ignored them.

Lash had stretched himself halfway to the ceiling, making an obliging target, and I lobbed a fireball at him. He stretched out of the way and it instead impacted on Boomer. He merely looked startled and started to brush the sparks away.

"Watch it Hothead!" he snapped. I snarled at Lash, angry with him that he had made me miss. I was running cooler flame that usual, I had to during the game, and so Boomer had been more startled than hurt. It still made me realize I had to keep the flames at the level of the duriglass walls if I didn't want to get one of the spectators hurt. _Take a deep breath, Peace, this isn't over yet._

Stronghold had apparently taken enough of Speed's run-by-attacks, and tried something else. Leaping up into the air, he pounded the ground with his fist, making the ground buck like an earthquake. I leapt over it, while Speed and Lash were sent flying. Speed landed square, but Lash crashed down hard, and Will got his hands on him. I saw him using Lash's own arms to tie the guy in a knot to a lamppost while the crowd laughed. Actually, that _was_ pretty damn funny, and about high time for Lash to get a little dose of humiliation.

Then Speed went zipping past my field of vision and I started unloading a volley of fireballs at him. Each one was landing just behind him, and I cursed the fact that my power was so _slow!_ Behind me Will had Lash all tied up in a bow, and seemed to be admiring his handiwork.

"Hey!" I yelled, "Save the citizen!" We only had forty seconds left and our citizen-dummy was dangerously close to the mulcher.

Speed came right for me again, and I was ready for him this time, or so I thought. Instead of strafing past, he started running in a circle around me, too fast to be seen as anything but a dark orange blur. I wanted to start pounding the "walls" of this circle with flame, but I started to gasp and feel faint. The flames died on my arms and I clutched my throat as blackness started to descend on my vision. It _hurt_ , it hurt really, really badly, more than being slammed through two walls. I began to crumple to my knees, and there was a roaring in my ears.

A few seconds later the blackness began to lift, and I saw that Will had grabbed Speed and pointed him in a different direction, using him as an arrow to crash both him and the bound Lash into the barrier. He looked around desperately for a way to save the citizen as Boomer yelled at him and the crowd ticked down the last few seconds. Will apparently had some brilliant idea, as he picked me up and hurled me through the air like a javelin, straight at the citizen over the mulcher. On reflex I grabbed her as I sailed past, and ended up flat on the floor as the buzzer rang.

"Time! She's alive! Heroes win!" Boomer called out as the students began cheering. I tossed the dummy to the side as Will ran over to help me up. I ignored his hand and just glared at him as I levered myself up and walked slowly to the locker rooms. Behind me the crowd was pouring onto the floor, there to congratulate Stronghold. He _was_ the first freshman to win at Save the Citizen, so I couldn't entirely blame them. I appreciated the fact that Speed and Lash had both lost and lost badly to a freshman, but I had actually had to have been _rescued_ by Will, so my feelings of good will went only so far. And I had a _pounding_ headache. It was actually so bad I had to go to Nurse Spex to see if I could get an aspirin or something.

I ended up having to tell her everything I had done that day, apparently to see what triggered it. Super-kids often had strange reactions to seemingly normal things, and Nurse Spex was always trying to make sure she didn't miss anything. When I told her about what Speed had done to me, she got an "ah-ha!" expression.

"Oh that's it then, that's easily fixed. Try to power up for me," she said brightly as she began to dig around in a cabinet. I shrugged and tried to oblige, but suddenly my headache got ten times worse and I felt myself starting to black out again. To make it worse, there was no rush of heat, and I didn't generate so much as a spark. I clutched the side of the table with one hand, to keep myself from falling, and tried to use the other to keep my head from splitting open.

"Heavens! I'm sorry dear, here," she said, sounding apologetic and flustered. Suddenly she shoved something over my face, and I gasped a bit in surprise. I opened my eyes to see she had an oxygen mask pressed to my face. I was startled, but realized that each breath was making the headache go away, so I finally let go of my head and took the mask myself.

"Speed's vortex sucks away oxygen. It's actually a rather clever move that would be useful in disabling anyone, but it's particularly devastating to anyone with fire powers. You use more oxygen than a regular person, and you store a more of it in your body to help with your powers. When he sucked away your air, you only got enough back when he stopped to keep you alive, not power up. So you had a headache," she explained as I gratefully sucked on the pure oxygen.

"So… no powering up in the vacuum of space, right?" I asked flippantly. Nurse Spex just chuckled and shook her head.

"I wouldn't try doing it on a mountaintop dear, you'd just get a dreadful headache for your pains. Oooo, we better work on that before you graduate. Can't pick where you're going to fight a supervillain, right?"

I just shook my head in astonishment. I wondered if they knew about this kink in my powers at Metroplex Detention Center. If they didn't, I think a few headaches would do my dad a world of good. I resolved to write them a letter sometime soon. In the meantime, I had to get back to the bus. The world didn't stop turning because of a little game of Save the Citizen, or I discovered something new about my powers. I still had my shift at the Paper Lantern tonight, homework to finish, and a lot more thinking to do.


	3. Hero's Journey

I had worked at the Paper Lantern restaurant since I was thirteen, unofficially doing work until I could get a permit, then spending four or six hours a night a working as a busboy, usually six nights a week. On the weekends I did full shifts to boot, trying to get enough to help out with the bills at home. Maybe I wouldn't have to do it for much longer, with Mom going back on the active list (and active superhero pay), but Mr. and Mrs. Lee were very good friends after five years. I had even picked up a pretty fair amount of the language, mostly because Mrs. Lee would forget to switch to English if she was mad or in a hurry.

The place was usually busy; cheap prices and a good location ensured that so I was rarely bored here, and the tips weren't horrible. It was getting late, pushing on ten o'clock, and only one customer was still sitting. Amy was folding napkins, Mr. Lee was counting down his drawer, and Mrs. Lee was cleaning up the kitchen, so I wandered over with a water pitcher to see if I could help get her out any sooner. We couldn't leave until the last customer had left.

"You still working on that?" I asked as I walked up behind her, doing a double take as I realized it was the red-haired hippie chick that was always hanging around Stronghold.

"Hey," she said, smiling a little.

"Hey," I replied, still a bit startled. I hadn't seen anyone from Sky High here before.

"We go to school together?" she asked, trying to see if I even recognized her.

"You're Stronghold's friend," I pointed out.

"Yeah…" she said, looking… chagrined? What was that about?

"Yeah…" I said, a little embarrassed. The first time she had ever seen me up close was the day in the cafeteria, and I was feeling a little awkward about how I had threatened her. She looked utterly harmless. She was even eating an entirely vegetarian dish… and the orchid at her tabled was withered and wilted. That wasn't like Mrs. Lee to miss a fading flower like that. Hadn't I heard of her before? No, not her… one of my mom's old friends, Sunshine Evans, a.k.a. The Beast-Tamer. She could talk to animals, I remembered from some of the letters I had written when I was trying to find out more about my mom. _And she mentioned her kid could control plants,_ I recalled.

"You want me to heat that up for you?" I asked, pointing at her food, trying to sound more casual. If she wasn't going to bring up the cafeteria fight, I wasn't going to either.

Layla leaned towards me a bit. "You're not supposed to use your powers outside of school," she whispered, looking a bit worried. _Worried about me getting into trouble?_ Naw, why would she?

"I was just going to stick it in the microwave," I assured her in a whisper. No need to point out I would probably burn the whole tabletop and render her food into charcoal if I tried to do that with my powers. Precision is not exactly what I'm known for.

Layla laughed at bit at her own scatterbrained comment.

"Uh… I was supposed to be meeting Will here but…" I raised an eyebrow. She had been doing everything but throwing herself at him the few times I had seen them together, and he had stood her up for a date? Either he was being cruel, which was unlikely, given what he had said to me, and what Mom had mentioned about his parents, or he was being dense about it. Then again, fourteen year-old kids that didn't have my mom's kind of expert advise generally were clueless. I knew about that kind of crap way before any of my classmates, and I think the one thing my mom _never_ wanted me to have was a broken heart. Not that I blame her.

"You want to sit down?" she asked, pleading in her eyes. _She just wants someone to listen to her,_ I realized. I looked around; the place was virtually empty except for staff.

"I think I can spare a minute," I said, and slid into the booth opposite her. Powering up just a tiny bit, I flicked out a tongue of flame and lit the candle. It wasn't a romantic gesture, not really, I just liked fire. And if she needed to babble on about something for a while, at least I could amuse myself by watching the flame. Lord, I was glad I did about ten minutes later, as I was getting the entire history of Layla and Will from about the age of three onward. But it was almost as if I _had_ to listen, to pay attention to everything she was saying. Was this how my mom felt when she was using her powers? I was getting more and more convinced I had inherited a touch of hers as well.

Layla was winding down a bit, going on about a science project and growing lima beans, ending up when she had revealed her powers to Will. Everything she was saying, and what little I had observed, was telling me she was in love with him. And she was being very careful to _not_ say anything of the sort too. So that meant I had to, or it was going to bug me the rest of the night.

"And falling for him, was that before or after the lima beans?" I asked casually. Layla contrived to look incredulous, but I could tell there wasn't anything behind it.

"What? I'm not in love with Will Strong-" I stopped her with a _look_.

"Is it that obvious?" she asked meekly.

"Yeah," I nodded, looking resigned.

"Great," she half-squeaked, looking pained.

"So why don't you just tell him?" I asked. My brain was laughing at me, pointing out that here I was, a guy who had always repressed his emotions, telling a girl to let her feelings be known. I told my brain to shut up, pointing out that I didn't _always_ have to be the tough guy. Besides, it wasn't at school; there was no one else watching us. What happens at the Lantern stays at the Lantern, right? I sure hoped so.

"Well…" Layla looked uncomfortable. "I was going to ask him to Homecoming, but there's two problems; he likes somebody else, and she's _perfect_."

I had been toying with a fortune cookie as Layla had been talking, and casually looked at the fortune as we talked. _Huh, that's eerily appropriate. And I don't have to take credit for it either. Excellent._

"Hmm… You know what I think? 'To let true love remain unspoken, is the quickest route to a heavy heart." I put on my best serious face as I said it, and Layla looked impressed.

"Wow…" she said faintly, "That is really deep."

"Yeah," I said confidentially, and then let more a smile creep into my tone, "And, your lucky numbers are… four, sixteen, five, and forty-nine." Layla smiled a bit and laughed, but right then Mrs. Lee started calling from the kitchen, yelling at me to stop socializing and get to work scrubbing tables.

"Just a minute," I called back in Mandarin, and then switched back to English. "I gotta go," I said with a shrug, and handed her the fortune. "See you around, hippie." With that I got up, and quickly ended up in a long argument with Mrs. Lee about my work ethic.

Layla was gone by the time I was finished being run around, and I didn't have time to give her more than a moment's thought. I just hoped she did like I suggested, because I definitely wasn't ready to be a relationship counselor for the rest of Sky High. Gossiping girls… Hell, I hope I hadn't gotten in over my head.

* * *

It was nearly eleven by the time I got home, carrying dinner for both Mom and I. "Mom? I'm home," I called out, listening to try to figure out where she was.

"Up here Warren," I heard faintly from her bedroom. I walked up and poked my head in, finding my mom flat on her back on the bed, still in her Peacemaker costume.

"Rough day at the office?" I asked lightly, and Mom gave a short laugh.

"In a good way. They were really glad to see me back… and I'm not taking 'no' for an answer anymore." She pushed herself up, and I could see she looked a bit wilted, but was smiling broadly. "I was working with several unions in the city, and some of the companies that were employing them. They were arguing about cleaning up after the latest big robot, and people were about to start striking and causing all sorts of nastiness. I straightened them out, had to knock a few heads, figuratively, but I think we have a good working solution." I started to grin in spite of how tired I was. Here was Mom, _my_ Mom, doing what she did best, and being happy about it.

It might not be as flashy or impressive as Stronghold's parents, but I was proud of her all the same. Mom's power was actually good for cleaning up after _their_ messes, because really, when do they cover Robot Damage Clean-up in school? Being a hero didn't just mean battling supervillains, and I think I was all the prouder of her because she was willing to take on things that didn't put her in the spotlight. _Heroes in small things as well as large_ , I thought. Maybe it wasn't stopping some big war, but that didn't matter to me, not as long as she was happy about it.

"Great to hear," I said, and gave her a big hug. "And hey, I think I could use your advice on something I did today…" What I had done at the Paper Lantern just seemed kinda odd in retrospect. It wasn't like me to get involved with people I barely know, and particularly not people I had threatened with fiery death at some point in their lives. Mom listened to me, and placed one hand over mine, reading me. Then she shook her head.

"Warren, what effect I had on you is long gone. That was all and completely you in there. Maybe you do have a touch of my powers, I can't really say for sure. But does it make you uncomfortable, what you did?"

"Umm…" I couldn't even think of a coherent answer to that. _Should_ I feel uncomfortable about listening to Layla's problems? "I guess… I guess not. I just… I've never done that before." Mom gave a silvery laugh.

"Warren, people _change_ , particularly after they've had a big shock like you did. You're just learning more about who you are. It's not a bad thing, and as long as you know why, or at least are comfortable with it, then I wouldn't worry about it." I was a little startled, hearing her talk so casually about change, particularly because of my dad, but she did have a point. Dad changed for no real apparent reason, in an unhealthy way, which ended up making him a psycho. So… I was changing to be a nicer, more tolerant guy? I guess could do worse. But I still wasn't going to stop wearing black.

* * *

Then again, maybe I should have been a little less nice to Layla, because the next day was a whole new level of weird. I had been sitting and reading at lunch, at a table by myself, as usual, when Layla casually plopped down with her lunch.

"Hi Warren," she said casually, as if she did this every day. I must have looked twice as confused as I felt.

"Did I do or say anything last night to make you think this ok?" I demanded. Just because I was nice to her once didn't mean I was ready to be buddies. I had an image to maintain. _Yeah, just keep telling yourself that,_ my brain snidely commented. I resolved to ask my mom if there was a way to keep your mind from making stupid side remarks; I was getting tired of it.

"Ha, you're so funny. But seriously, you're never going to believe what happened. I was just about to ask Will to Homecoming, but wouldn't you know it? I told him I was going with you instead," Layla said with a kind of hopeless forced casualness.

"I don't remember that being the plan," I pointed out, still really confused. I was still trying to come up with some kind of answer, or question, or something, when the girl with the purple hair sat down next to Layla.

"Hey Layla, you did the history homework?" she asked, starting to dig out some papers from her backpack, as casually as if she sat here everyday. I was starting to get a little mad at the way she just ignored me. I mean, no one ignored me! They avoided me, didn't look at me, sat away from me, but never _ignored_ me. _Jealous that someone doesn't think you're all that?_ my mind asked.

"What do you think you're doing?" I growled.

"It's called sitting," she said condescendingly.

"Nobody sits here, but me," I pointed out forcefully, trying to get my point across.

"Uh huh," Layla and the other girl said simultaneously, and then ignored me again as the purple-haired chick started asking her about a homework question. My mouth was open in astonishment as I tried to figure out what else I could say, when that nerdy kid with the glasses plopped down next to me.

"Hey, are we eating at _Warren's_ table now? I feel _extremely_ dangerous!" he enthused. I looked at him in a mixture of astonishment and growing horror. What the hell had I done? These were all _Stronghold's_ friends. Why weren't they sitting with him? Why sit with me? I had threatened their lives at one point, didn't they remember that? _Maybe I should do it again_ , I thought faintly, _if it'll get them away from my table._ I wasn't used to this much company.

"Whoa, whoa…" I was saying, as the day-glo kid sat on my other side.

"This guy bothering you Magenta?" he asked the purple-haired girl.

"Try the other way around," I snapped. I really needed to get away from this, but I was afraid if I just left, Layla would follow me. _I just need to know what she wants from me._ "Does anyone else need a date for Homecoming?" I asked with ill-grace. The nerdy kid raised his hand, and I studiously ignored him.

Layla suddenly gave a too-bright laugh, clapping her hand down on the table like I had just said something hilarious. "Warren, you are cra-zy!" she said enthusiastically, smiling widely. _What the hell?_ Then I saw Stronghold walking by, Gwen Grayson by his side.

"Please, I promise I'll make this as painless as possible," she said a more normal tone, with a note of pleading in it. I glanced behind Layla to look at Will again, and he kept trying to twist around to look at us, and didn't look entirely happy about Layla being there. Suddenly her little plan clicked, but I still kept my face in a scowl.

"So, you're not doing this because you like me or anything. You're doing this to get to Stronghold," I said, jerking my head towards him.

"Yeah," Layla said in a low voice, looking sheepish and resigned.

"Then I'm in," I said, breaking into a grin. Stronghold was being an idiot for not seeing how much Layla liked him, and if he was going with Gwen ("…and she's _perfect!_ " I remember Layla saying last night, and Gwen fit that bill), that was his problem. Gwen was a cold-hearted bitch that only cared about how much power someone gave her. She was just a good actress, being the perfect little senior, and smiles and hollow compliments. If she had set her sights on Stronghold, it must only because he was probably the most powerful student at Sky High right now. I dropped the grin quickly though and added, "but I'm not renting a tux." I wouldn't want her to get her hopes up. This was only for show, after all.

I picked up my bag and left, bumping the day-glo kid on the way out. I wasn't going to be seen with them, not for a good long while, if ever. I don't think I could handle it if they would all start coming to me with their problems. _Curse of the Peace bloodline… yeah. Does_ everyone _come to us with their problems?_

* * *

Yet that whole new level weird was topped by what happened two days later. It was just after school and people were just hanging out, waiting for the busses to get loaded. I was reading, when Layla suddenly sat next to me on bench, wrapping both of her hands around one of mine. To say I was startled was an understatement, and then she started babbling almost frantically.

"Hey there cutie. I was just thinking about you! I cannot _wait_ until Homecoming, I'm _so_ excited! I'm…" she trailed off as she looked over her shoulder. I followed her gaze, spying Stronghold and Gwen holding hands, walking away from us. However, Layla wasn't letting go of my hand, she was so preoccupied with seeing if her speech had affected Will I was afraid someone was actually going to _see_ us holding hands. And Layla probably wouldn't notice until Will was out of sight. I let a little heat trickle into my hands, then flared a bit of flame.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, pulling her hands back. I felt a little bad about that, but it wasn't going to be anything worse than sunburn.

"Never call me cutie," I said with disgust, snapping my book closed and walking away. I was willing to give Will a bit of grief, but I wasn't going to be saddled with his estranged friends. I didn't need them. They didn't even like me. _Yeah, sure, and who else has ever sat next to you willingly?_ I sighed. My brain _really_ needed to shut up. Badly.

* * *

I managed to mostly avoid Layla over the next few days leading up to the dance, hoping to avoid another "cutie" incident. I worked extra hours at the Lantern, pulling an extra shift the night before the dance to avoid anything that might have to do with picking out dresses or jewelry or anything else Layla had been babbling about when Will was near. That girl had it bad for him, but Will still seemed mostly oblivious. I swear, the guy seemed as stupid as he was strong.

Of course, life wasn't nearly done throwing me curveballs yet. The Lantern was loud tonight, and for some reason past my understanding, Mr. Medulla was being hung on by two nice-looking blondes, while a dejected Coach Boomer drank a little too much saki. When had this place become Sky-High central? I was setting out water glasses at the empty tables when I spotted no one other than Stronghold sitting at one of the booths. Damn. Did someone hand out flyers at the school?

"What're you doing here?" I asked, almost before I could stop myself.

"I'm, uh… looking for Layla. Do you know where she is?" he asked, looking hopeful.

"How should I know?" I asked.

"I dunno, you're taking her to Homecoming," he pointed out.

"Oh yeah, right." I spent so much time forcibly not thinking of Layla as a date that I had forgotten that a potential date is supposed to know where his girlfriend is. Whatever.

"Well, you don't have to worry about me ruining you night," Stronghold said dejectedly, staring at the table.

"And why's that?" I asked, puzzled. He was going with goody-Gwen, why wasn't he with her tonight anyway?

"'Cause I'm not going." I wonder who burst the bubble, him or Gwen. He didn't seem devastated enough if he still liked Gwen, and he had come here looking for Layla…

"Well that sucks," I said, taking a seat, wanting to clearly see his face for the next part, "'Cause we were only going together to make you jealous."

There was a long pause and a look of total confusion on Will's face. "Huh?" I sighed.

"Dude, you're so stupid, she's totally into you," I said calmly. Will looked both resigned and sad.

"Not after tonight. I wouldn't be surprised if Layla or any of the other guys ever want to talk to me again," he said with conviction.

"Yeah… you must have been a real jerk. Because no matter what I do, I can't get them to stop talking to me," I said bluntly. The kid needed a wake-up call badly, and if it took a verbal bat knocking him over the head, then fine.

"Thanks," he said distractedly, and I got up to finish my rounds. He didn't stay more than five minutes after that, and left looking like a whipped dog. Maybe I should have felt more sorry for him, but he had managed to mortally offend his friends, that was his fault, not mine. Hell, he must have really pissed them off if they were willing to try to sit with me in the cafeteria, I realized.

Well… now what? Layla's whole reason for going with me was to make him jealous, and now he wasn't going. Should I even bother? I went home wondering if helping people was always going to be this complicated. _Oh, probably more so. This is just high school, wait until the Real World, Warren Peacemaker._ My brain was more right than usual today, I couldn't even argue.

* * *

Mom had a surprise for me on the day of the dance, calling me up to her room a couple hours before the bus would be around to pick us up.

"Warren, I know you said you didn't want to rent a tux, but I thought this might be easier…" she was saying as I walked in. There was a black suit and tie lying on the bed, and I looked from her to it with growing horror.

"You didn't get one for me, did you?" I asked.

"No, it's Baron's," she said shortly. "He doesn't really need it." I opened my mouth once and shut it again. I had told Mom I was going with Layla, and even why. She didn't really approve, but she hadn't forbidden me. "It's a very backhanded way of helping, but you better be careful who you hurt, Warren," was all she had said to me when I told her.

"I wasn't even going-" I started.

"-to go? I don't think so Warren. You're not leaving that poor freshman girl up there without a date at her first high school dance. You're not going to stand her up too," she said severely, her arms crossed. Uh oh. My mom might be The Peacemaker, but she was still a female. I think I just pushed some old buttons. "Now, into the shower, get into this suit, and get on that bus!"

I didn't even bother to argue with her after that. I think she would have trussed me up hand and foot and put me on the bus herself if I hadn't gone willingly.

* * *

The party wasn't too bad; the school had enough money for plenty of decorations, food, and punch, as well as far too many speakers. The music wasn't too horrible, but I wasn't in the mood to be as desperately happy as the rest of the crowd. Apparently Layla wasn't either. Her green dress was about as bright at the day-glo kid's tie, and easy to spot. I snuck up behind her as she was talking to one of the Sidekick teachers.

"The guys at this school are jerks!" she was saying above the music.

"Thanks," I muttered behind her, and she whirled, her cheeks pink with embarrassment. She looked at me with surprise.

"I thought you weren't going to rent a tux!" she exclaimed. I leaned in a bit, not wanting to shout over the music.

"It's my dad's. He doesn't have much use for it in solitary," I pointed out. That stopped Layla cold, and she grasped for something else to say.

"Cheese cube?" she blurted in sudden inspiration, holding up a piece of Swiss cheese on a toothpick. I sighed, and then took it. I wasn't interested in dancing, really, and if eating a few bits of party food would keep me off the dance floor, that was all right with me.

The dance dragged on for a while more before Principal Powers introduced The Commander and Jetstream. That gave me a bit of start, and I wondered why Will wasn't with them. I had never seen either of them up close, and I was surprised how very confident, competent, and polished they looked. I knew they were considered the world's greatest superheroes, but now I started to realize why. These two were on the top of their game, and even after over fourteen years of marriage and a kid, they were still the world's best. But they didn't seem really aloof either; they just seemed like regular people, under the body armor and spandex. I made up my mind that I really needed to talk to the Commander about my dad someday.

Then Principal Powers started in on speeches and other interminable crap. Gwen Grayson took the podium to blather on about one thing or another, and then made a point of giving Commander and Jetstream some kind of award, going on about the "most powerful being at Sky High."

That's when the world took a nosedive out of weird and went straight into Wonderland. Gwen was none other than Royal Pain, and before anyone could react, she had her Pacifier weapon out and beaming everyone in sight into babies. The crowd started to panic, and when Will's sidekicks and I started to look for an exit, we saw Speed, Lash, and Gwen's right hand girl Penny slamming the safety gates at every entrance.

 _The hell?_ The screaming from the students was as loud of that of the babies suddenly underfoot, and we were running around trying to find a way out when Coach Boomer caught us.

"Hothead, find an exit; get as many people as you can out as you can, I'll slow her down-!" he was saying, as another white beam hit him square on. More loud squalling was echoing behind us as we darted around, looking for a way out. I spied a large air vent, and stopped the sidekicks from getting in front of me as I lobbed a fireball at it.

The grate popped off and the few of us crawled in. The screaming died down behind us, replaced with the faint crying of hundreds of babies. _We were too late. What can we do now?_ I thought frantically. But in front of me, Magenta had a much more practical concern.

"Where are we?" she asked. It was as black as the inside as a hat now that we were away from the gym.

"Hey Warren, how 'bout a torch?" the nerdy kid asked.

"Only if you want to get barbequed," I quipped back. No one else in this vent was fireproof, and the metal walls and ceiling would burn everyone within a few seconds if I powered up in here. There were just as many drawbacks to powerful powers as there were benefits, as I was having brought home to me rather forcefully.

"Ladies, if I may," said the day-glo kid from a little farther ahead. And then he began glowing a bright green. _Huh,_ I thought. Not exactly powerful, but damned useful. _He ought to open a rave warehouse when he graduates._

"Way to glow Zack," the nerdy kid said.

I don't know how long or far we were crawled, but enough that the screaming babies were so far away we couldn't hear them and my knees were killing me. We might have been getting closer to a different grate, but I couldn't see anything past the feet of the person in front of me.

Then ahead of me I heard a _grinch_ of tortured metal, and I heard Zack say "Hey kid!"

We piled out, Will and the rest of us filling each other in, though us more than him. He had figured out what he could, not having been at Homecoming himself, so I had to give him some credit. And he also chose that moment to suddenly apologize to his friends and Layla, stealing a kiss from her. I admired the kid's attention to the romantic, but this was hardly the time or place…

"Isn't that sweet? I _hate_ sweet," snapped a voice behind us. Penny, of course, with Speed and Lash flanking her.

"You guys are a part of this too. Why am I not surprised," Will said in a very calm voice, facing them with a determined air. Zack and Magenta ducked back for the air vent, not that I blamed them. Neither of them had powers that could do anything to those three. And at least the nerdy kid could hide more easily if he melted.

"Go take care of Gwen, we'll handle these clowns," I said to Will, ditching my jacket and rolling up my sleeves. Will was the most powerful of all of us, and Royal Pain probably thought she was done with any more resistance today. If she had just put the Pacifier aside, he had a better chance of not ending up like his dad. If she stopped to gloat or monologue or anything, he had a fighting chance. But not if Speed alerted her first. Besides, I had a score to settle with him from Save the Citizen.

"Go," Layla whispered, and Will turned and ran right through a wall, taking the most direct route possible to the gym.

I flamed up first, and then Speed whipped right by me, spinning me around and then dashing further down the hall. I ran after him. I knew I couldn't catch him, but I knew the idiot wouldn't be able to resist taunting me once he had some room to run around. I just hoped he wouldn't think to try the vortex trick. I was also hoping Layla and the nerdy kid could handle Penny and Lash. Or at least delay them. A little. Please…

Speed was having way too much fun at my expense, zipping around me, taunting me at every opportunity.

"Yoo-hoo! Right here! Hit this!" he laughed. This time I wasn't throwing fire around indiscriminately, I was going to wait for a clear target, and I wasn't going to give this fool the satisfaction of dodging my fire. I was going to be patient and pick my target. And this time he wasn't going to know what hit him.

I stepped around a corner as Speed seemed to want a change of venue, at the same time when the nerdy kid stepped out of the bathroom. He saw Speed barreling towards him and abruptly melted. Speed hit him squarely and began to skid out of control, straight for wall.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he yelled, trying to windmill his arms for balance. Now I had my target, and let fly with a fireball. It was a good, solid hit, and Speed ended up half in a wall, his pants on fire.

"Way to go, Popsicle," I said to the nerdy kid as he resolidified, giving him a high-five. When I asked him what he had done to Lash, I laughed at the thought of Lash with his head down a toilet. "I don't suppose you got blackmail pictures, did you?" He held up a small camera from his pocket and I just shook my head in admiration.

Then Layla came nearly screaming around the corner, yelling about how the school's gravity generator was going to fail. I guess she must have beaten it out of Penny, and my admiration raised a notch. We ran to the school library, and Ethan (apparently the nerdy kid had a real name, unfortunate as it was), melted under the door and grabbed some blueprints. Layla spread out the prints while the rest of the sidekicks gathered around, trying to figure out how to get the generator. I was out of my depth, maps always confused the hell out of me, and I probably needed to go help Will if he didn't have Royal Pain under wraps yet.

When Zack exclaimed that only a rat could get through the conduit, all eyes turned to Magenta, the purple-haired kid.

"Oh great," she said with resignation. Soon enough I found out that she could shape-shift into a guinea pig, and Zack and Ethan stayed behind to guide her through the maze. More crashes and booms were coming from the gym, and Layla insisted we had to go and help Will. We ran for all we were worth, skidding into the gym just as we found Will over a prone Royal Pain. The gym was a wreck, and I was obscurely impressed at the amount of damage the two had done.

"Will!" Layla screamed, and like an idiot, Will looked up instead of finishing knocking out Royal Pain. There was a faint hum and Royal Pain belted Stronghold with an electrical-packed punch, sending him across the entire gym… and clean out and through the window and over the side of the school. I couldn't even believe my eyes, that she had just _killed_ someone so casually.

"And there goes your last chance of stopping me," she said arrogantly, standing with her back to her handiwork.

"We'll see about that," Layla snapped, starting to stalk forward. I put out a hand to stop her, not wanting to see _her_ go flying over the edge too. We had to defeat her from a distance; no one here could fly… Just as I thought that, movement at the window caught my eye. It was Stronghold, flying with a kind of stunned calm on his face. Royal Pain whirled to follow our gaze, surprise in her stance.

"Surprised? So am I!" Will said, sounding about as surprised as he looked.

"You're flying?" Royal exclaimed in disbelief as Will began to surge forward. "But that's _impossible!_ " she howled as Will picked her up. He flew to the top of the gym and dropped her a good thirty feet, putting a huge dent in the floor. Flying down to her again, he punched her helmet, destroying part of her suit, and Royal Pain went limp.

He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and he and Layla practically ran into each other's arms. I clapped him on the shoulder, pretty damned impressed. _Not bad at all for a freshman._ However, I learned right then one of the superhero rules they're always trying to pound into us: never leave a supervillain alone until you're absolutely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're defeated. Because right then the school dropped out from under us like a runaway elevator.

Layla managed to gasp out to Will what was going on, and he flew outside to see if he could slow it down any. Layla and I could do little more than clutch at the floorboards as our stomachs tossed and turned and our ears popped and popped from the sudden descent. It was like one of those dreams where you dream you're falling, but you wake up before you hit the ground. But a dream had never been so _real_ , so gut-wrenchingly terrifying. I was hoping, praying, that Magenta, or Will, or somebody, _anybody_ would stop the school before we all died. It rated right up there with the scariest experiences of my life, right until the floor steadied, and with agonizing slowness, we stopped, and then began to rise.

Getting the school back into the air was the easiest part, and Will filled the rest of us in on the rest of Royal Pain's plan, while everyone else regaled us with their own parts in the rescue. Zack raided the Principal's office for the keycard to the Detention Room while the rest of us dragged the bound or unconscious bodies of Royal Pain, her sidekick Stitches, Penny, Speed, and Lash inside and locked the door. Apparently Ron Wilson, the power-washout that drove the bus, had kept Stitches from driving off with a busload of pacified former Sky High students and teachers, actually saving the day.

But none of us had any idea of what to do after that. As I've said before, most superheroes don't have to deal with the aftermath of their heroics. But we got some kind of break at least. Mr. Medulla's powers were super-intelligence, enough so that being turned into a baby only had a marginal affect on his brainpower. Despite the fact that the freshmen stuck me with changing his diaper, he was able to reverse the Pacifier in only an hour, and apologized profusely afterward.

I was even impressed with Will, when he tried to take the blame for the whole mess on his shoulders, telling his dad to his face that it had been all his fault. When his dad and mom only comforted him and told him it was all right, I admit, I was jealous. Would I have been so messed up if my dad had been anywhere near sane? Probably not. But… I couldn't be mad with Will, not after tonight. He had been selfless, taking on humiliation and spine-crushing combat with equal aplomb, all of it to save his school, including plenty of people that he didn't know. Maybe I could even be friends with him. Maybe.

The Commander and Jetstream were just like Will, easily giving the award Royal Pain had meant to give to them to the sidekicks, Zack, Ethan, Magenta, and Ron, making the night just about complete for everyone involved. Well, except maybe for me. I didn't feel like I had done that much. Ethan, even Zack had done more than I had, and I felt like a bit of fifth wheel. When Mr. Medulla started the party again though, I did feel like celebrating a bit, maybe even dancing. But Will and Layla were making out a few thousand feet above ground level, right outside the broken window, Zack and Magenta were attempting to do something that _looked_ like dancing… kinda, and even Ethan had found some tall, dark girl that wanted to have a dance with the hero of the hour.

 _And here's Warren Peace, standing on the fringe again_ , I thought, starting feel sorry for myself. Then a flash of pale color caught my eyes. A statuesque blonde girl in white had managed to get up next to me, and extended her hand, frost forming from her fingertips to the elbow. _Melissa Frost? But she's never even looked at me before._ I shrugged and flamed up a little, gently holding her hand. My fire was extinguished as her frost melted, and she laced her fingers through mine with a smile. _That felt kind of interesting… and if she wants to give me_ _a hero's welcome… I'm not going to argue,_ I thought, suddenly feeling much more cheerful. Tonight was going to be great, I knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a one-shot - [The Book of the Dead](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532874) that goes right after this chapter.


	4. Friends

 

Melissa made the rest of the night pretty fun, even if she told me it was mostly as a reward.

"So, why now?" I had asked her.

"You saved the school," she said softly. I raised an eyebrow. "And I was scared of you before today." I rolled my eyes a bit and finally sobered up. "I just wanted to thank you, that's all." I looked at her a little harder, and saw she was telling the truth. I was just the flavor of the day, apparently, but at least she was sincere about it.

"Hey, thanks for letting me know," I said softly.

"It's Homecoming; it's supposed to be fun," she pointed out, and I sighed. Well, I wasn't going to say I expected this to turn out fairy-tale perfect. But it was very nice while it lasted, believe me.

* * *

The next few weeks after Homecoming ended up with some huge changes made at the school. The biggest of them might have had the most resistance from the school board, if they hadn't just had the reason for it flung in their faces. The Hero/Sidekick classes were being integrated, and they were going to put a whole new system in place. The damage Royal Pain had done just because she was resentful about being a sidekick… well it didn't take a genius to draw the parallels from that to some of the violence that went on in normal high schools on the ground. The difference was that a supervillain could do a lot more damage, and not just in the short-term either.

Former Hero-class kids had to learn about weapons and vehicles, Sidekick-kids found themselves going through the hard physical courses, the whole nine yards. Some people objected, mostly the old-school heroes, haughty hero-students, and some Sidekicks who didn't think they could handle the responsibility. But superheroes worked better in a group, and that wasn't a new thing at all. Even the worst of the complainers couldn't refute the fact that the two greatest superheroes of all time, the Commander and Jetstream, worked as a team of equals. So imagine what a _group_ of superheroes working together could do.

Will actually advocated for that, citing the fact that if we all hadn't worked together the night of Homecoming, the whole thing would have come apart. If Zack hadn't provided us with a light, we might have been crawling around lost in the ductwork until Royal Pain and Stitches had flown off with all the babies. If Magenta hadn't been able to get to the scrambler, the school would have crashed into Maxville. If Ethan couldn't have defeated Lash or distracted Speed, they could have warned Royal Pain to speed up her plans. Hell, if Ron Wilson, bus driver, a guy who had no powers whatsoever, hadn't stood up to Stitches, everything still could have gone to hell.

There were still plenty of problems trying to get the kinks worked out in the middle of the school year, but most of the students were more than willing to help. Of course, it didn't hurt that the students could get away with some goofing off since the teachers were still pretty unsettled and unused to teaching kids with "lower-power" abilities (our new politically correct term for Hero Support).

Another big change was that Speed, Lash, and Penny came back to school. Apparently when they had signed on for Royal Pain's plan, death wasn't involved anywhere. If she had pulled it off perfectly, everyone but her, Stitches, and those three would have been turned into babies. They would have taken the bus off the school, and by the time the scrambler kicked in, the school would have been floating over the lake on the far side of town. It was only because her plans got interrupted that she decided to activate the scrambler earlier, preferring to die rather than have her plans thwarted twice. Yeah, she's currently in the same prison with my dad, locked somewhere in solitary with a repressor-field on constantly, in a cell with a door secured with measures no more complicated than a simple lock and bar, and no access to technology of any kind. I can't say I'm at all upset if that's driving her nuts.

But her three moles at the school had just signed on because it would be the ultimate power trip. Then again, none of them are very forward thinkers. Because they're minors, they ended up on probation until sometime until they're forty, with twenty-four hour monitoring and a crapload of community service. I think they may end up cleaning the school _until_ they're forty. Principle Powers made us promise that no one would harass them, so we keep off their case… officially. Trust me, some people at this school had been bullied by those three for a long time, and they weren't going to let a golden opportunity like this pass them by. Of course, those three weren't going to tame down in just a couple of months, so that was pretty much business as usual. They avoided our group like the plague though.

That was the other big change that year; I actually became part of a group. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened, the Monday after the Homecoming disaster I was sitting alone, then the whole group descended on my table.

"Hi Warren," Layla said as cheerfully as she had the other week when she had asked me to be her jealousy-date. I didn't even have time to respond before Will sat down next to her, saying "Hey." The others followed suit, each with a "Yo," or "'Sup?" or something. At least this time they didn't hem me in, and left me plenty of my own space. I still wasn't sure what was going on, but I decided just to ignore them and keep reading my book. They didn't say a whole lot to me, but I knew somehow they were just respecting my space, not ignoring me.

Ethan only said, "You did a really good job with Speed." And Layla mentioned, "He was a real gentleman, kinda like Will after he apologized," which ended up in a playful shoving match, luckily not on my side of the bench. I responded to both comments with a sound that could have been taken as an affirmative, but basically kept to myself.

The next lunch it was the same, and the one after that, for the rest of the week. I started to wonder if I should start switching tables so I'd have peace and quiet again, but I realized I was actually enjoying their company. Zack would usually say something really funny, Magenta had a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor, Ethan always had some interesting factoid to share, Layla was just enthusiastic about everything, and Will was always there backing up his friends when they were right, or setting them straight when they were wrong. I actually would find myself snickering at one of Zack's antics or Magenta's comments, writing down Ethan's little interesting asides, or even putting in a comment during one of Will or Layla's debates. Before I even knew entirely what had happened, I was actually talking and participating, commiserating about teachers or homework, justifying my pick for a winner for that weekend's football game, or talking about power quirks.

I didn't have nearly as much in common with them classes-wise, as I was two grades ahead of them, but when the school board started shaking classes up all around, then it became relevant for all of us. It was suddenly like double-majoring in college, as all of us found ourselves taking classes we never dreamed of. I had no idea Sidekicks had to learn so much stuff, a lot of which seemed useless until we had it explained, and the Sidekicks found themselves having to push their own powers to the limit. Hero students had to do something called "The Gauntlet," a kind of extreme obstacle source combined with something like Save the Citizen, to make sure they could perform heroic rescues (or other deeds) under any and all conditions.

"Sidekicks," I said one day at lunch, "were under appreciated." Maybe the former Sidekick students were suffering physical aches and pains and some brain strain from Advanced Mad Science and Moral Dilemmas classes, but the former Hero students had headaches from trying to master the minutiae that Sidekicks usually took care of. I had had no idea there was so much: Vehicle Basics for everything from motorcycles to jets, Costume Construction and Maintenance (superpowered home economics.), Superpowered History (as Sidekicks were traditionally supposed to supply names and information to their heroes about supervillains, their organizations, and any devices they had), amongst other things.

"And Heroes," Zack added, "were overworked." At least, that's I think he said, because he had his face flat on the table while Magenta helped rearrange an icepack on his shoulder.

"Gauntlet today?" I asked, already knowing the answer. All the others looked sufficiently wiped out as well, Magenta's hair was flat down her back, Ethan actually looked a little melted, Layla's braids were half-unraveled, and Will was barely holding his head up.

"Yeah, and those doors are damned heavy dude!" he groaned. I could sympathize a little. The Gauntlet was set up so you had to get over walls, through a maze, across a moat, get into a sealed room, and fight off a pair of armed villains before retrieving a citizen and returning to the starting line. You could climb up a wall or go through it, swim through the moat or leap over it, thread the maze or find the secret doors in it… there was no one way through the Gauntlet, and Coach Boomer would keep changing it by adjusting the lighting, or adding wind, or changing the temperature.

"At least you'll never have to do it all in the dark, he's done that to me before," I offered. Zack, or at least Zack's shoulders, looked a little less slumped at that. "And he did once make me run it in freezing temperatures. That sucked."

"Couldn't power up?" Will asked in sympathy.

"Not after I blew the first wall apart; I got too cold. Next time I'm bringing a lighter. Or a blowtorch," I said. "I think he's threatening to make us run it without our powers entirely sometime before graduation."

Zack groaned into the table and began to bang his head into it. Will reached out and stopped him with one finger and Magenta gave him a grateful look.

"Well, I'm really proud that Coach Boomer is seeing how great the former Sidekicks can be in traditional Hero classes," Layla said cheerfully. "He's just seeing that we could have done it all along." Layla, I'd found out, was very much into equality, and despite the fact that her power was easily Hero-class, at the beginning of the year she had refused to show it to Boomer and was put into Sidekick class as a punishment. Gutsy move, to stand up to the status quo like that, but it did leave her really unprepared to use her powers in tough situations. She told us it had taken Penny slapping her in the face to motivate her to use her powers offensively.

"I think he's just taking it out on us that he can't call us 'whiner-babies' any more," Magenta put in, finally getting Zack's icepack adjusted to her liking. "He's never this hard on the Hero kids."

"He's just not used to setting the course for people with really different powers," Ethan pointed out. Ethan was looking pretty bad today, probably because he managed to piss off Boomer by threading into the Gauntlet in puddle-form, and thusly was not nearly as exhausted as everyone else was when he took the citizen out. Boomer wanted people to have to fight their way both in and out, and made Ethan run it twice so he could find more appropriate obstacles for him.

"You don't have to defend him Ethan; he _is_ being harder on you guys," Will said. "I think it's my fault. I kinda made him mad."

"What, you broke the all-time record? Twice? It's no _wonder_ he's mad," I said. Will's flight made virtually all ground obstacles irrelevant, and his strength made walls pointless, as he could just pound right through them. It was probably a good thing the Gauntlet was done in much more privacy than Save the Citizen, or the public humiliation of having a freshman beat the record might have pushed Boomer to do something nasty.

"Yeah… my bad," Will said, finally cracking a smile.

"You owe us man," Zack mumbled, "like, do my history homework or something to make up for it."

Ethan opened his mouth to protest the academic fraud while Magenta kicked him under the table.

"You can do my biology too," she added sweetly, dropping the papers next to Will's tray. He was starting to look a little frantic when Layla caught on and added another notebook to the pile.

"And how about my botany assignment?" she said with a smile.

That about did it for all of us. The mere idea of Layla letting Will anywhere _near_ her botany projects had Will gaping like a fish; he had a black thumb, and wasn't any more than academically average in the rest of his classes. Zack cracked first and started to snicker into the tabletop, Ethan was snorting behind his hands, and finally the rest of us started laughing at Will's flabbergasted expression. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking, _I'm with a group of people who're laughing, and they aren't laughing at me. I'm actually hanging out with a group of… friends!_ That kind of brought me up short when I thought about it, and I hid my confusion by taking a drink of milk, trying to look like I was just getting my laughter under control.

 _Friends. When was the last time… or anytime, I had any real friends?_ And honestly, when I thought about it, I couldn't think of any. No one in seventeen years had been willing to be a friend to me. Most people had made fun of me, and so I either fought with them or kept them at a distance. And when I got my powers, I was twice as careful to keep people away. When Layla had asked me to sit down at the Paper Lantern a few weeks ago, it had been the first time anyone had made a genuinely friendly gesture to me. Ever. Then the rest of them willingly sat down next to me at lunch, Will had been actually polite and honest with me (even when I was supposed to be taking his best friend to Homecoming), and all of them had stood with me when we helped save the school.

It was weird to think that someone with my powers could feel cold, but now I could almost feel something in me thawing. It was like relaxing a tense muscle or something, just sitting here, laughing and talking with people that I knew wouldn't try to bully or tease me, who would respect my opinions, even take me down a peg if I were wrong. How bizarre.

"Ok, that's enough excitement for Stronghold today, let him finish his lunch before he goes and makes life harder for the rest of us," I finally put in when the rest of them had gotten themselves under control. Will was still laughing, but managed to obediently take a bite of his sandwich.

"So," he asked in between mouthfuls, "you really think the Sidekick classes are hard?"

I rolled my eyes, "Tedious," I clarified.

"But they're useful!" Layla protested, starting to look a little perkier. She was halfway through a salad that looked like it had been harvested from my backyard, and ticked off her points with a celery stalk as she went. "Being able to make your own costumes, having all kinds of tools at your fingertips if your powers aren't suited for a situation, knowing how to fly a jet-"

"Still tedious, and you've never seen me try to sew," I growled, contriving to scowl at her. Superhero home ec. was perhaps even more humiliating that running the Gauntlet, thought at least everyone, girls and guys, had to take up a sewing machine or needle.

"Well, you wouldn't want anyone else to decide what you wear, right? I mean, they might try to put you in bright yellow. Or me," Magenta pointed out, and I looked so horrified at the very thought that the table broke up laughing again.

"We could always see if they'll let Stitches out of jail to do our costumes," Ethan suggested brightly, and we all turned to see if he was serious. "That's his power you know; making or changing clothing with his mind."

"Wow… that's almost as useless as my power," Magenta quipped.

"Your power's not useless!" Zack said, actually sitting upright, clutching his ice pack with one hand and repressing a look of pain on his face. "I think you're pretty cute when you're shifted. And when you're not." I rolled my eyes, both of those two blushed and then kissed really quick, and the rest of the gang got really interested in their lunch, though I saw Will and Layla exchange a heated glance.

* * *

The workload at school eventually evened out a bit as some classes were combined or altered, and people started getting used to the idea that their slacking-off time was going to be severely curtailed. Despite what I had said in the cafeteria, I was doing pretty well with the new classes. They _were_ as tedious as I had said, but they weren't hard. Though like most people I was spending a lot of time after school with the kitchen table covered with books and notes, catching up on homework.

One night Mom came in late as I was finishing up physics homework, and paused right behind me for several minutes. I knew she was working herself up to say something, and just concentrated on the answer as to the amount of force it would take to budge Mt. Everest while she thought.

"Do you have enough room with all of that?" she asked finally. "I mean, I know you have that science project due in two weeks, and the table's a little small…"

"Just spit it out Mom," I said without turning around. "I thought we'd move," she said quickly. Suddenly Mt. Everest could wait. I turned around and looked at her in surprise, and she had a big smile on her face.

"They're really happy with the work I'm doing, and I have enough to keep me busy from now until forever. I've been getting bonuses for some of my work and… well… we've always wanted a nicer house, a bigger house, and maybe one closer to your friends. So I thought we'd move. If you want to."

It took a second or two for that to process. We had always lived in a tiny little house in a not-so-nice neighborhood, and honestly, now that I had friends, I really wouldn't have wanted them to come here. I know Mom had wanted to have a nicer place for me to grow up in, but we never had had a choice. _Things are finally looking up for the Peace family._

"Well yeah! Mom this is great!" I said, smiling and laughing, pulling her in for a hug. We had stood on one of the bottom rungs of the superhero ladder for as long as I could remember, Mom disgraced because of who she had married, and me because of who I was. Now Mom was back in the game and I had proven I wasn't going to turn out like my father. Or at least I had proven myself to some. This had to be the first real, tangible reward I had seen for heroics. Well, except for Melissa.

"I was going to use the Bureau to find us a place, if that's all right with you. They could find us a place near some other super-families so we wouldn't always have to be so careful, probably near some of your buddies," she said. I shrugged. The thought of having _any_ house nicer than the one we were in made whoever was going to make it happen irrelevant.

"And Warren," she said softly, "I'm glad you made some friends."

I looked at her oddly. I shouldn't have been surprised; Mom knows everything there is to know about me, but for some reason that just struck me as odd.

"You're calmer, happier, more focused on good things rather than brooding," she went on. I really couldn't think of any response to that, so she just kissed me on the head. "Don't stay up too late. And I don't suppose any of your friends has a truck we could borrow?" I laughed at that.

"Only true friends would help you move?"

"Something like that," she said sheepishly.

Despite the fact that I was seventeen, I didn't have a car, or even a license. Road rage in a pyrokinetic made for melted or exploded cars, so even if we could have afforded one I would have avoided driving. The bus or skateboards were my transportation of choice, but neither was made for moving to a new house. I just hoped we could hire some movers or something. (And wasn't _that_ a bizarre thought, that we could afford to do something like that?)

* * *

Will had an entirely different idea when I mentioned my request the next day, however.

"We can help you move! I bet between all of us-"

"Us meaning mostly Will moving the heavy furniture," Layla cut in, smiling at him.

"And with me moving the heavy furniture, we can get you moved in a day."

"I kinda live across town right now," I pointed out, touched that they'd be willing.

"So, what're friends for? If we can't handle a little house-moving, we better never put on capes!" Will said enthusiastically.

"Will, we'd just me moving the _stuff,_ not the house," Magenta pointed out, "Relax."

"Yeah, right, got it, just the stuff." The others groaned and Ethan lobbed a ketchup packet at Will's head.

Ok, so they were all a few years younger than me, and sometimes they were annoying, or clueless, or just plain weird, but that cemented my friendship with them right there. I mean, who else is willing to hump heavy boxes without pay but a friend?

"Uh… thanks guys. I'll let you know when," I said softly, trying to get them back to planet Earth. I was wondering though, somewhere in the back of my mind, when the floor was going to drop out from under me. Things had never gone this well for me, not ever. _Well, the first seventeen years mostly sucked. Every cloud has a silver lining, and you've had nothing but thunderclouds. You're due for some silver,_ my brain pointed out.

* * *

It turned out that the house we ended up getting was the one in Will's neighborhood, though Mom and I both had second thoughts. Well, more like third thoughts. The house itself was great, though after our old house nearly anything looked nice; but even I had to admit this was the type of house I would have loved to grow up in. It had four bedrooms, bathrooms on every floor, an attic, a basement, a big backyard, though luckily no pool (water and I didn't get along very well).

It wasn't even the fact that it was Royal Pain's house, the one she had been using when she was attending Sky High as Gwen Grayson. It had been seized by the government and put back on the market after her arrest. After we heard that Mom and I exchanged looks of alarm and the realtor laughed.

"Oh don't worry, we checked the place out. I was just mentioning it because it already has a lair dug under the house, so you don't have to worry about putting one in." There were advantages to having someone sent over from the Bureau of Superpowered Affairs; they could afford to be candid.

"How do you know she didn't leave any nasty surprises?" I had asked harshly. I had no intention of putting Mom in any danger, and Royal Pain was a sadistic bitch. I wouldn't put something like that past her at all. The realtor seemed a bit taken aback by my tone, but I wasn't going to apologize.

"Mr. Medulla checked the place over inch by inch, and then we had Techarcana go over it herself. She's another technopath, sidekick to Machine Man," she said reassuringly, and Mom breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn't heard of the other two, but I knew Mr. Medulla had been beside himself for overlooking Gwen Grayson/Sue Tenney as Royal Pain. Not to mention the embarrassment of being turned into a baby after casually walking back into her trap. He might have no sympathy for those who couldn't understand Mad Science, but he would have enjoyed the challenge of beating any of Royal Pain's technology in her own lair.

No, the second and third thoughts were because of the fact that our realtor was Mrs. Stronghold. We had met her on the steps of the house so we could take a tour, but when Mom had realized who it was (and I just a minute later), we both stopped in our tracks. Mrs. Stronghold stopped too, not three feet from Mom and I, and we both stared for a minute in shock and anger. What moron had assigned _her_ to _us?_

"Joy," Mrs. Stronghold said faintly, looking stunned.

"Josie," Mom had said evenly, looking stern, her lips tight. I knew that look very well, it was the look I received when I used to try to wriggle out of something I had done wrong. She was _not_ going to make this easy.

"Joy…" Mrs. Stronghold said again, and then paused a long moment and let out a large breath, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

"But you had other things on your mind, a job to do, a husband to love, and soon a new baby on the way. No time for old school pals, particularly when they were so tainted and disgraced," she said evenly, old pain and anger in her voice. I was watching my mom with wonder. I had never seen her really angry before, and it was impressive in its quiet way, more so than even some of my fiery tantrums. Mom had spoken fairly highly of Will's mom back when they were in school together… but I didn't blame her one bit for still being mad at Mrs. Stronghold for abandoning her after Baron Battle was put in prison. Mom had told me more than once that sometimes for peace to occur, people had to air their grievances first. And Mom had a whole lot to air.

Mrs. Stronghold flushed red with shame.

"Don't try to explain Josie, I know I was all but ordered to be shunned. And Steve's stance on supervillains and those that _fraternize_ with them… well. Wouldn't be prudent at all to drop me even a letter. Not one letter, one visit, in seventeen years." Mrs. Stronghold opened her mouth once, and then shut it again at Mom's glare.

"I'm sorry?" she managed to squeak out finally, making it a plea. Mom looked at her hard, then nodded once shortly.

"Show me the house, Josie. And don't leave anything out."

Mrs. Stronghold looked grateful to be let off the hook, and frantically showed us everything about the house, even flaws I'm sure she would have glossed over otherwise. She told us about it being Royal Pain's former house, and practically raced to get the paperwork that both Mr. Medulla and Techarcana had signed off on, showing they had found no technopathic abnormalities in the house.

Mom finally nodded after a while, and after a brief conference with me, nodded at Mrs. Stronghold.

"I think you can start the paperwork Josie. We'll be getting it, at below your asking price." Mrs. Stronghold just swallowed hard and nodded.

"I'll go… get… them now," she said, sidling a bit to the side, then practically running into the other room to get her folder. I was holding back a really nasty chuckle when mom turned and winked at me.

"Go pick out your room and office, Warren, I have a few things I need to discuss with her in private, if you don't mind."

"I get an office? For what?" I asked, momentarily distracted.

"Things, paperwork, maybe a computer, hanging out with your friends if you want some privacy but don't want them in your bedroom, I really don't know," she said, her eyes still following Mrs. Stronghold. "Just scram, I don't want witnesses when I shamelessly guilt-trip our realtor into giving us this house for a song."

"Love you Mom," I said with a smile, and pounded upstairs. My mother might be the most ethical person on the planet, but she's still human. So maybe I didn't get to watch what was bound to be the most entertaining thing this week, but I had something else to amuse myself with.

I had a letter in my pocket, one that I was saving for a special occasion. About two weeks after Homecoming I had finally remembered to write that letter to the Metroplex Detention Center, pointing out my dad's _special_ oxygen needs. The warden knew who I was, of course, and I was almost certain he had seen a recording of the meeting between my dad and I five years ago. He wasn't stupid.

_Dear Mr. Peace,_

_I thank you for bringing your father's special needs to our attention. We at the Metroplex Detention Center strive to make sure our inmates' needs are met, and your suggestion will be given due consideration. We will be sure to make Baron Battle as comfortable as possible. Please let us know of any future developments._

_Sincerely,_

_Warden Thomas Ulrich, Metroplex Detention Center For Superpowered Beings_

Oh yeah, my dad was surely suffering the grandmother of all headaches right now! This almost made up for not being able to watch Mom get a little of hers back. I wasn't going to tell Will about it though; it wasn't _his_ fault his mom made mine mad. _Well, look who's come a long way from wanting to roast the Commander's son alive in the cafeteria just a few months ago._ I sighed; it wasn't exactly easy, being someone different after so many years of being menacing and standoffish. But it made for a lot less grief, that's for sure.

* * *

True to their word, the whole gang showed up one Saturday to help Mom and I move our stuff, and we didn't even end up needing a truck. We spent the daylight hours packing boxes, waited until night fell, then had Will ferry most of it to the new house. Having a flying, super-strong friend around when you're moving is really, really useful. The rest of the time we were just trying to unpack and put things in the right rooms. Our little house had really been crammed, because the new place didn't look too outrageously empty once we were done. Of course, there were a few kinks.

Will had piled most of the stuff in the living room so we could sort through it later, and so we had Layla yelling out what was written on the boxes, and my mom yelling back from the kitchen where they should go, and then someone else running it to the correct room.

"Clothes! Good grief, this is like twentieth box…" I heard Layla saying from downstairs.

"Are they black?" Magenta called from one of the other bedrooms. She had a knack with electrical devices and had been put in charge of setting clocks and other electronic things. Zack had been barred from that when I saw him fry his own MP3 player at school after someone startled him. Apparently the kid generates a lot of static electricity in addition to glowing.

"Yeah, they're black," Layla called back.

"Warren's!" she replied.

"Very funny," I snapped back, trying to get my books in order on their shelves. Mom had splurged on some new furniture when we bought the house, including some bookcases, mostly because she had saved quite a bit due to her "suggestions" to Mrs. Stronghold. I had Will bring all the books up to my room while he was still playing moving man, because I think I had at least a thousand that I had accumulated over the years. I'm sure Mom had about three or four boxes of her own somewhere in here, but I hadn't found them yet.

"If you were moving, would I assume everything purple was yours?" I called.

"Probably. Dye doesn't take to the streaks in my hair, so I just embrace it. You're in the same boat, so you're in no position to talk," she shot back from the doorway.

"Whatever," I shot back lamely.

"Poetry!" I heard Layla call out.

"Warren's!" my mom responded, and I turned about as red as my hair when Magenta suppressed a giggle.

"You write _poetry?_ " she asked, looking incredulous.

"Don't say another word or you don't get barbeque," I said as I dashed out of the room. I needed to get my hands on that box before Layla or anyone else decided to read any of it. It was all dark, angsty, gothic stuff from a few years ago, and I _really_ didn't want anyone else to read it. Really.

I jumped down the stairs in record time and grabbed the box out of Layla's hands before she could hand it off to Ethan.

"I'll get that," I mumbled.

"You know, shouldn't you have said, 'Don't say another word or you'll _get_ barbequed?'" Magenta asked. She had come down right behind me.

"No, because I'm barbequing for you guys after we're done. Though right now, I'm not so sure you're worth the trouble."

"You can _cook?_ " Ethan asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I learned it in Super Nutrition," I said in my best deadpan voice. "No, I just barbeque, that's it." Layla looked a little pained. "And I'll do the tofu and vegetables first," I added, sighing. She brightened a little, and then there was a crash from upstairs.

"Uh oh…" we heard from upstairs.

"Damnit Stronghold!" I yelled, and ran upstairs again, still holding the box of poetry. He sometimes forgot how strong he was, and he had already accidentally ripped a locked door off of its hinges, thinking it was merely stuck.

I heard some laughter behind me, and Magenta was saying, "Layla, don't you think you ought to go protect Will?"

"He can take care of himself!" she protested, and there was a chorus of more laughter.

I found Will leaning casually against a wall upstairs, his arms crossed and looking remarkably unruffled.

"What did you break this time?" I demanded.

"Nothing, I just figured it was easier if the guys thought we were up here beating the living daylights out of each other or something," he said, smiling a bit. "At least they won't come up here for a while."

"Easier than what?" I asked, now getting confused. I took a second to shove the incriminating box of poetry into the back of my closet before going back into the hall.

"Easier than having Layla try to sort these out in front of everyone. They were all unlabeled, and I though you or your mom should do it," he explained, and stepped to the side to reveal four old, unmarked boxes. My breath caught. I knew exactly what those were; I had remembered seeing them in my mom's closet once or twice when she had been explaining to me about my dad. I opened the corner of one box and looked in, spying an old picture of Baron Battle, his arm around my mom. I slammed the box shut again and took my hand away. I could feel it heating up, and I took a few deep breaths to get myself calm again.

"I didn't look, I just guessed," Will said softly. "And I'm sorry they got my mom to sell you the house. That was really dumb of them." I had to wait a few more minutes before I was sure I wasn't going to accidentally power up or say anything stupid.

"Thanks, " I said finally, trying to put as much feeling into it as possible. I really didn't need any of the others to have found those boxes; they were understandably curious about Baron Battle, and I don't think any of them might have resisted at least a quick peak through them. Will's apology helped too, even though he had nothing to do with it. That's just the kind of guy he was, willing to take on the blame and punishment for things that even were only peripherally his fault.

"Sure thing. You want to put them somewhere, or you want me to do it?" he said casually, but I could see from his face he was touched.

"My mom's closet. You better do it though; I think I better go do something with the food," I told him, pointing to the correct room. My hands were practically glowing from the heat in them, and I had to get myself away from any paper. Will nodded and picked up all four boxes.

"Will," I called after him, and Stronghold whipped around. I don't think I had ever called him by his first name to his face before. "Thanks for being a good friend."

Will smiled. "Anytime."


	5. Christmas and Confrontations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a humorous one-shot - [Warren versus the cats](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532876) that goes right after this chapter.

 

The new house made me feel a lot more like part of the gang. I was getting invitations to study with them, or to come over to dinner, or just to hang out. It was still a little strange to just be able to walk into someone else's house without worrying that someone was going to call the police, but I had to admit I liked it. More than once I would find that Ethan had dropped notes off for me at my house if I had been working during a study session, or Layla had sent over some new cutting for my mom's garden. I would reciprocate by bringing dinner from the Paper Lantern to our study jams.

By the time the holidays had rolled around I felt like I had a little family of my own. An eclectic, bizarre, super-powered family, but a good one nevertheless. Layla had once said, "Friends are the family you choose," and I had taken that to heart. Too many years of shutting out everyone and everything that I could so I wouldn't lose my temper had made the contrast just amazing. They were still pesky sometimes, like little brothers or sisters, or sometimes they were too curious, but anything boneheaded they said was usually followed up by an apology.

They all knew I didn't have a lot to do with the holidays, there being just Mom and me. I obviously had nothing to do with any of Baron Battle's family, and Mom's relatives had nearly disowned her when my dad had been put in prison. She told me she was slowly mending fences in that direction, but wasn't going to expect a family reunion any time soon. So the gang tried to make up for that by trying to include me in all their own holiday hijinks.

Ethan invited us all to a huge Christmas party at his house at the beginning of winter break to celebrate our freedom for two whole weeks. He had a _huge_ family, and even his big house felt crammed to the rafters with all the relatives. _His_ dad could turn himself into massive wave of water, and about half of his relatives have some variation on that kind of power. Apparently this made for some weird family traditions about being careful what you drank, and to label _everything_ liquid with a name, and to ask its permission before using it or drinking it. If a punch bowl had a sticky note on it that said "Evelyn," you had to ask the punch bowl (addressing it as Evelyn) if you could take a drink. If you failed to do so, and someone caught you, you had to do something embarrassing as a forfeit.

Will forgot to do this and had to sing "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" while wearing a blinking red nose. Ethan had the presence of mind to snap several pictures for later use. He told me that the tradition grew out of a family legend where someone had apparently been resting, in liquid form, in a bowl, and had accidentally gotten drunk, or added to a cake, or something of the sort. This was so weird I had to believe it.

Magenta refused to participate in most holiday stuff, but there was apparently one thing that even she was willing to suffer through. Her family owned a farm on the outskirts of Maxville where they held family shapeshifting contests. In the summer months Magenta said her brothers and cousins would go out there to see who could beat the others in foot races (apparently their alternate forms were things like horses, wolves, or big cats). Her father, who could turn himself into a lion, organized the whole thing. But during Christmastime the family would go out there to exchange gifts with their far-flung relatives before Christmas day proper. The trick was that you had to hide the other person's gift so they could only get to it in their shapeshifted form.

Though Magenta hated the fact that her form was perhaps the least powerful of her entire family, she really liked hiding presents. We helped her tuck presents into weird corners one day, and got to watch the whole family shapeshift together to go hunt for them. I admit; it was a pretty cool sight to see a group of people one minute and the menagerie of a circus the next.

Zack's family traditions revolved around making their house the biggest, brightest, most decorated attraction in Maxville, and he hauled all of us out to scramble on the roofs and trees to string more lights that I thought were legally allowed onto his property. Most of family had some kind of power related to electricity (his dad was Electro-Man), and we all got a few shocks from strands of lights that would randomly blink on and off whenever any of his sisters would handle them.

Layla's family did a big winter garden in their backyard. Her mom spent some time laying out food and plants that all kinds of critters would find attractive, while Layla helped out every cold-hearty plant fill in and around their patio. She had us all over when it was ready to have a winter picnic. The place looked fantastic, with lights and candles strung all over, and the plants forming living walls and furniture for us to sit on. Birds, rabbits, squirrels, and other animals kept popping up all around to take morsels from the various feeders, and Layla's mom would translate their comments for us. We sat around an outdoor fireplace, drinking hot chocolate and apple cider, talking about nothing in particular until about midnight.

Will's family also had a big traditional Christmas party, but this time I excused myself, pleading that I had to work. It wasn't that I didn't want to go, because I did. It was because I still hadn't talked seriously with his dad. More than once I had heard the other's families refer to me as "Baron Battle's son" when they thought I couldn't hear. Most of the time they were just saying how much I _wasn't_ like my father, but it still hurt just hearing myself described that way. I had such a stigma still on me, even though I was trying to prove my worth, that those comments kept bringing me up short.

I realized I didn't know that much about Baron Battle, despite what Mom had told me. He had been a skilled actor and liar, and had never shown his true face until his fight with the Commander. Mom hadn't seen him like that until the very end of his free life, and had years of knowing him as someone else before that day. But there were two other people who had seen him with his mask off, and those two were my best friend's parents. They hadn't been standoffish when they had briefly met me at Homecoming, but at that point they probably had so much on their minds already that I wasn't even on the radar.

I didn't want to go into Will's house before I had a chance to talk with both of them. I _needed_ to know what they thought about it, about _me_ , about my dad and my mom. Mom's reaction when Mrs. Stronghold had sold us our house was enough to know that I needed to go very deep, and that kind of serious discussion had no place at a Christmas party. That, and I didn't want the others to know what I was going to do.

* * *

I couldn't do it before Christmas, and I needed to wait until Will was going to be out. _He_ wasn't involved with this, and he didn't need to hear it. However, I didn't know his parents' schedule, and I didn't want to take the risk of finally getting up the guts to do this and have them be away. So I cornered him in the kitchen at Magenta's family farm when we were supposed to be bringing drinks out for everyone.

"Stronghold, I got a question for you. A serious one," I said finally. I wasn't even facing him, I was trying to fill a mug with apple cider while he cut the eggnog, but I could tell I had his attention.

"Yeah?"

"I need to speak with your parents. In private. When would be a good time?" I got out quickly. There was a long pause behind me.

"Oh." Then, "Oooooh. Ok." Will was appreciably faster on the uptake since he started dating Layla. "Umm… lemme think… New Year's Eve would be your best bet. Mom and Dad said they weren't going to do anything special this year; they were going to stay home. And Layla and me are going to have dinner at Anthony's Italian before going over to Zack's house for our New Year's party, so you could go after we leave. Barring any emergencies they should be there all night."

I breathed a sigh of relief and turned around with the cider.

"I won't say anything, not even to Layla. That's why you're not coming to my party, right?" he added quietly.

"You're getting better at this thinking thing Stronghold," I answered a bit more loudly as I sailed back into the living room.

"Hey, that's not true!" Will protested, following me. "Wait… that didn't come out right…"

* * *

It was strange to think that in about a week I would finally have the answers I had been looking for for almost my whole life. You'd think I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on anything, but life goes on whether you're ready or not. The gang got together two days after Christmas to show each other what gifts they'd gotten, and to exchange our own. Zack gave me a couple CDs of his favorite techno music, something I also enjoyed but wouldn't admit often. Ethan gave me a book on famous superheroes, complete with notes on which pages had heroes that had similar powers to mine (everyone had gotten one of those, albeit with different notes). Magenta gave me a shirt that looked just like my favorite phoenix shirt, but in red.

"Now you own something that _isn't_ black," was all she said about it. Layla got me a flower, a weird-looking purple lily about three feet high.

"It's a voodoo lily," she explained happily. She was as bad as Ethan in explaining things when it came to plants. "It usually smells like rotten meat and uses flies to do its pollination, but I fixed it so it wouldn't. I thought it was appropriate because it gets hot, a little over a hundred degrees when it's blooming."

"A warm flower that smells. Thanks hippie," I said, laughing a bit and shaking my head. She had gotten everyone some "appropriate" plant, though I think mine was the weirdest.

Will got me a framed piece of scorched lunch tray from our cafeteria fight that he had signed. The rest of the gang started laughing when I unwrapped that, and I threatened to burn the rest of Will's presents as a "thank you." I just handed out gift certificates to the Paper Lantern to everyone for my present. I wasn't really great at the gift-giving thing, and most of them liked Chinese food anyway.

"Though in Stronghold's case it's just a certificate for a clue-bat to the head when he needs it," I added, and had the pleasure of getting back Will for his present.

The rest of the night we talked about what we were going to do at Zack's house on New Year's Eve. Zack said his dad was going to lower some electric disco ball in their back yard like they did at Times Square, in addition to more lit decorations than you could shake a stick at.

"Maybe I'll blow it up for you when it reaches zero, that'll be fun," I offered sarcastically when Zack kept going on about a little duel he and his dad were having about who could have the coolest event at the party.

"Yeah man, that'd be awesome! And my dad'd have no clue! Man, I've been trying to one-up him on this party for weeks," he said enthusiastically. I noticed Zack was glowing again; he usually did when he got wound up, and then there was no stopping him.

"Seriously?" I asked, blinking at the idea that he would willingly let me destroy some of his dad's property.

"Totally man, he ends up blowing out half the lights anyway at this shindig. A few more won't matter."

"Uh… I might not be there for all of it, but I guess I can be there before midnight," I said finally. "Just keep everyone out of the way."

"No prob man. Dude, this is going to be totally cool, my sisters are _totally_ going to freak when I tell them Warren's coming."

"Oh God," I said, burying my face in my hands, "If I've ever done you any favors, _don't!_ " Zack's sisters were all a few years older than him, and three were still single and apparently interested in me.

"Don't worry man, I was just joshin' ya, I wouldn't do that to a compadre," Zack said in his usual easygoing manner.

The party broke up on a high note, and I wondered a little at the strange way my life had changed.

* * *

On New Year's Eve it was snowing, and I waited outside the Stronghold house in the cold for Will to leave. I hid behind the bushes outside the gate, feeling like a thief in the night. Will left a little early, walking right by me casually, but patting me on the shoulder as he went. I waited until he got Layla from next door, and then watched as they flew off to their dinner plans.

I waited another ten minute to try to get my nerves back under control. Despite my friendship with their son, despite what I had seen them do at Homecoming, and despite the fact that I knew my dad was a psychotic murderer, I still had some long-buried anger in me at the Commander and Jetstream. I had too many unanswered questions about the day Baron Battle had been defeated, and Mom had shown me with how she had talked to Mrs. Stronghold what the far-reaching consequences of that had been.

I finally took a deep breath and went through the gate, marched up to the door, and knocked. If I had hesitated for a second, I don't think I could have gone through with it. I was on the threshold of my own past, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling at all. My stomach was churning and despite the cold I could feel the heat surging along my arms and spine. Every snowflake that got near me was being melted instantly.

Mrs. Stronghold answered the door with a cheery "Happy New Year!" that died on her tongue when she saw who it was. "Oh hello Warren. Will just went out with Layla, but I think they're going to join you at Zack's later," she said after a second.

"I came here to talk to you, not Will," I said quickly.

"Oh," she said faintly, looking confused, then waving me inside.

"Actually, I came here to talk to Jetstream and the Commander," I clarified, taking off my hat and scattering water droplets everywhere. I clutched the hat carefully, hoping she wouldn't see it start to smolder.

"Oh," she said again, and now there was a note of understanding in her voice. "I think I understand. Well. Come into the den, and I'll get Steve. Do you want anything to drink?"

I shook my head as I followed her, my heart in my throat. I waited in the den as Mrs. Stronghold called down to Steve to come up from the Secret Sanctum, somehow impressed that they would even let me see the entrance.

Whatever she had told him had apparently changed his tune from "Honey, I'm about to beat the top score on the pinball machine!" to, "I'll be right up!" I guess asking about putting one of your son's friend's fathers in jail would do that.

They both sat on the sofa opposite me and took off their glasses, and just like that, I was facing the Commander and Jetstream. It was simple how easily their cover identities were shed, and even though they weren't in costume, they were both projecting the _presence_ of which they were so strongly I had no trouble seeing it.

"I need to ask you about my father," I said finally after a long minute. They looked at each other and nodded.

"I had gathered. I was actually surprised you waited this long. I thought after seeing what happened between me and your mother…" Jetstream said, and then shrugged.

"It's hard," I pointed out, "I don't know much about him, and I don't want to. But it doesn't stop me from _needing_ to know. Just… what happened that day?"

They exchanged another look, and then the Commander picked up the story.

"We had a call from the Bureau in the night, an emergency call from the European office that no one else could handle. They asked for us specifically. We had just started working together and they had found out what a good team we made. The only thing we were told was that Baron Battle had gone villain and was going to attempt to murder people at the World Diplomatic Conference in a few hours. We were the only ones who could stop him."

"So I picked up Steve and we flew. I can reach Europe in a couple of hours if I fly fast enough, and even then it was nearly too late. By the time we got there, half the building was on fire and people were fleeing in all directions," Jetstream said, trying to illustrate with her hands. "Baron Battle had apparently disconnected or destroyed the fire alarms and sprinklers and trashed the water main leading to the building so he couldn't be stopped."

I swallowed hard and kept my hands clenched tight on my hat. I had brought a flame-retardant one for this very purpose, because right now I could feel my hands heating up at that horrible mental image. Baron Battle could have killed dozens of people with that kind of stunt.

"Josie flew me into the main conference hall, and we were attacked immediately. Baron Battle had killed three people before we got there, and another man died as I watched, and I couldn't do anything about it. Baron kept his flames on me, trying to force me to the strongest part of the building so I couldn't bash my way out as easily. I am super strong, but fire still hurts, and Baron Battle knew that," the Commander explained, and could see regret in his face.

"The smoke was so thick in there that I would have had to ground myself if I stayed much longer, so I just started getting people out of the building safely. I had to let Steve face Battle on his own," Jetstream put in, and placed a hand on the Commander's arm. He covered her hand with his own and I felt a surge of envy for Will that I quickly tried to suppress.

"Baron Battle was… _evil_ Warren. I mean that in every sense of the word. He began telling me his plan, how he wanted to rule the world the way he wanted to because no one else was worthy. He used to rant and rave like that back when he was a student, but only when he was acting. It was chilling to think I was seeing the _real_ Baron Battle now.

"He kept snarling at me, hemming me into a corner and burning me to keep me at bay. I think he was trying to get the wall to drop on me so he could escape. But I wasn't going to let that happen. So I charged straight for him, took a few fireballs to the chest for my trouble, but finally got my hands on him," the Commander paused, and his brow was furrowed as he remembered.

"I wrestled him down, the Bureau came with power-neutralizer restraints, and he was cuffed and led away. But it was what he was screaming at me when they put him in the transport that really made my blood run cold. He said, 'I will have my revenge on you Commander! If not by my own hand, then by my blood, I swear it! I will see you and all you hold dear as ashes.'"

My gut clenched at those words. They had become so close to becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy that I was starting to feel ill. My dad hadn't even had to _do_ anything to me, other than let the suspicions of others fill me with anger until I was willing to try to kill Will Stronghold myself.

"Warren, at that point we really didn't know the story behind why he turned. It seemed so out of the blue, one day he was fighting the undead hordes of the Vampire King, the next day he showed up at the Summit and started burning people alive. I'm sorry to say, for a while your mother was even under suspicion, because of her powers," Jetstream tried to explain.

" _What?!_ " I roared at the last. Smoke began to rise from my hat as flames burst forth along my hands. Jetstream put up her hands in a calming gesture and gave me a stern look that I recognized from my own mom. It said, _calm down buster, you don't know the whole story yet._ I took a few deep breaths and slowly let the flames die. _You knew you were going to hear terrible things Peace, you have to keep your cool…_

"It wasn't for very long, just until she was able to explain she had been seeing signs of Battle's plans for months. She was so shaken up about it that it was obvious she had no hand in it. It hurt her credibility very badly though, and the Bureau wasn't willing to do much more for her than get her back to America and into a new cover identity. It really shook up the whole superhero community that something like this could happen, and I think everyone blamed your mother. Even though I know now that it wasn't her fault… at the time it was hard to believe that she couldn't have warned us sooner, or stopped him herself. We're so used to being able to fix everything ourselves that we forgot that we need our friends to stand by us… We should have helped her, but we didn't," Jetstream said softly.

"Baron Battle ended up teaching both of us a very important lesson, one that we've never forgotten to this day. No matter how strong you are, or how fast, sometimes you can't save everyone. However, never stop trying, no matter how grim the odds," the Commander added. "Warren, I'll admit the day you and Will fought in the cafeteria I was more excited that Will had gotten his powers than scared of the fact that _you_ , the son of a man I put away for _burning people alive_ , had tried to kill my boy. Josie pointed it out to be afterward, but I'll be honest, I dismissed it almost right away.

"If you had wanted to be a supervillain, I think you would have become one a long time ago. You haven't because you're _you_ , you're Warren Peace, not Baron Battle. Whatever you end up doing with your life, it'll be because _you_ decided to do it, not because of a man you've only met once did. I was impressed that you helped save the school, and I admire the fact that you're willing to come to us to learn about what happened in the past. I think you're going to be one hell of a hero, Warren, and I'm glad Will knows you," the Commander said with conviction, holding out a hand.

"And you're always welcome in our house," Jetstream added, "so you don't have to be a stranger." She added her hand as well, both of them extending a symbol of trust to me. My head was so full it was whirling, but my gut was telling me that things were going to be all right, maybe for the first time in a long time. I was running a little hot, but I carefully exerted a bit of control and cooled my hand enough to clasp of theirs.

"I think you probably have a somewhat better New Year's celebration to go to than hanging around with a couple of old folks though, don't you?" the Commander said with a wink as he shook my hand.

"At Zack's," I managed faintly.

"Then go have fun," Jetstream said, shooing me towards the door. I started to go, but turned back one last time.

"Thank you." They both smiled and nodded at me, and I practically ran out of the house. I couldn't help thinking though, that that conversation had been perhaps the most appropriate New Year's celebration I had ever had. _Ok, so my dad was a psycho. I knew that, I know now what he did…_ And what he had done was horrible, and what it had done to my mother was worse. _You can't blame yourself for other people being stupid_ , I told myself finally. Joy Peace was slowly reclaiming what had been lost to her when I was born, and if it was late… well, better late than never. _They apologized for what they did to her. The Commander and Jetstream, if anyone would have a reason to think of me as a born villain, they would. But they don't, they don't…_ While I hadn't liked hearing everything they had told me, it was like lancing a sore; you had to get all the bad stuff out in order for the healing to start.

My heart felt lighter somehow, and energy filled me. I started to run through the streets, melting snow as I passed, and not stopping until I saw the million-watt glow of Zack's house a few blocks away. I slowed a bit as I got to the front door and stopped, trying to get myself back under control. I was grinning like a fool, and at what I wasn't even sure.

"Hey man, glad you could make it. Get in here!" Zack said, interrupting my reverie as he opened the door. I stepped in and let the door close behind me, and really felt for once that this time everything was going to turn out great.


	6. Discovery

 

After the New Year's Eve party, things eased up considerably. With no more parties to go to, and all of us feeling extremely tired out after Christmas, we spent the rest of our winter break mostly lying very still, occasionally playing with our new Christmas gifts. We stayed in contact by phone for the last few days before school started again, after catching up on copious amounts of sleep, sleep, and more sleep.

I would sometimes wake up in the morning and marvel at the feeling of quiet in my mind. I felt like I had climbed over some great obstacle, or gotten out from under a weight that had been hanging over me all my life. I had talked to my mom about my conversation with the Commander and Jetstream, and I had both of us reduced to tears by the end of it. It turns out that Mom had been under no less pressure than I was these last seventeen years, and hearing remorse and sorrow from the lips of her friends was as much of a relief to her as it was to me. Mom took it to heart, and started hanging out with some of her old school pals shortly afterward, starting with Layla's mother, and eventually even Josie Stronghold.

However, I knew that a single conversation wasn't going to fix people's opinions of our family entirely. My friends' families had been nice enough to me, but people still thought of me as "Baron Battle's son." So perhaps I had some answers to my past, but there was nothing I could do to change what had been. The only way that Mom and I could regain the respect that the Peace family used to have before I was born was to be the best damn superheroes we could.

Mom started the New Year with her own resolution in that direction; her most ambitious project yet, taking on some of the European work she used to do when she was married to Baron Battle. I only knew about some of this peripherally, because when school started again, we hit the ground running. There were rumors in the works that they were planning even bigger changes to the curriculum next September, and they wanted everyone caught up on the current batch of classes before then. So my resolution was only to get through my classes without dying from exhaustion.

We managed to get through them without turning our brains into mush, though I'm still not sure how. People were so tired that by the graduation ceremony not a single senior prank had been played. I'm sure somehow the teachers didn't mind a bit. They finally let us out for summer vacation, but with perhaps the strangest "homework assignment" yet. They wanted us to use our powers over the summer. That was such a huge reversal from their previous stance that anyone caught using their powers outside of school faced the risk of expulsion that most of us didn't believe it at first.

Principal Powers herself explained it at our final school assembly.

"Beginning next year we will be embarking on a whole new type of teaching, including classes in small groups of people that you will eventually be working with when you graduate. You will be learning in your own super-teams. As such," here she had to wait for silence, because her comment had stirred up a lot of whispers, "we want you to start working out how your powers mesh with other individuals, and to get as much practice as possible. The penalty for _public display_ of your powers hasn't changed, but I know most of you have access to private places where you can practice. If you don't, you can contact the school for assistance. Your summer homework will consist of a journal of your practice sessions-" Groans echoed around the auditorium at that. "-Of at least three times a week from this week until the beginning of school! School is dismissed!"

* * *

On the bus, the rest of the gang had rather mixed reactions.

"This is awesome! I totally bet Mom and Dad would let me practice with them, and Mom promised to show me some flying tricks someday. If it's actually for school, I bet I can get her to do it this summer!" Will was saying, practically floating out of his seat. Layla put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a look, and Will abruptly grounded himself.

"Yeah, working on that control would be a good thing too Will," she said with a smile. Will looked sheepish as Layla took up the conversation. "I think Mom will let me come along on her trips around the state when she checks the national parks, so that'll be plenty of practice for me." Will gave her a sad puppy-dog look, and Layla hasted to add, "I'm not going to be gone _all_ summer Will!"

"Well mine's going to be a really boring report. 'Today I turned into a guinea pig.' 'Today I turned into a guinea pig and ran around.' 'Today I turned into a guinea pig and the cat chased me,'" Magenta complained.

"I know you could find a lot of ways to practice," Ethan protested, and Magenta shrugged.

"I probably could, but I don't have to like it. It's a stupid power," she said, glaring at the seat in front of her.

"Magenta's just modest. She's going to be the Super Guinea Pig of Doom, just you all watch!" Zack said with a grin, giving Magenta a hug. She only stabbed him with a look of reproach, but finally relented and rested her head on his shoulder.

* * *

The summer went really fast, whether in spite of or because of our homework I wasn't sure. I worked full shifts at the Paper Lantern, and everyone else went on some kind of vacation at some point with their families. Mom and I didn't go anywhere, but superheroes generally don't get to take long vacations. It wasn't that every else's parents didn't get calls and have crises to solve too, but The Peacemaker didn't just swoop in, save the day in ten minutes and swoop out again. Her power took time to work, and she worked long hours to make sure everything turned out ok.

Sure, Will's dad might have saved California from a giant radioactive monster, but _my_ mom kept his dad from having to interrupt his Fourth of July celebration by solving the next disaster _before_ it got to the giant radioactive monster stage. Scientists, I learned, can be very touchy when their work gets stolen. Particularly mad scientists.

Despite Magenta's insistence that nothing would come of her power, Ethan had taken that as a personal challenge to find a way to make a useful training program for her. And for Zack. And for the rest of us too. We would hang out a little in between vacations and work and Ethan would keep pestering us to keep up our journals. I really had no idea what kinds of improvements I could make to my powers, other than trying to get a little more accurate with my throwing. I was seventeen, and I wasn't going to develop any new quirks. Of course, Ethan had plenty of ideas on that score, some which didn't work, but some which actually were useful.

One of Ethan's suggestions to me was a near power-up, letting my temperature rise on my skin without actually bursting into flame. He thought it might make me a bit faster on the draw, particularly after I had been talking to everyone about the last game of Save the Citizen with Speed and Lash. It actually worked in principle, and I could actually keep it up longer than real flames. Of course I couldn't do any damage with that unless I walked right up to them and put my hand on them, but at least it gave me an edge. And it was something to put in the journal that didn't sound like every other day.

Will actually _did_ pry some flying tricks out of his Mom, and Layla had actually admitted to strategically rearranging plants to block off some paths in the national parks that went too close to rare species. Zack had found out, mostly by accident, that he could fuzz out any TV, cell phone, computer, or other electronic stuff by getting close to them without actually frying them, which was an improvement over the last time he fried Ethan's calculator. Magenta said she had learned something interesting about her guinea pig form from some of Ethan's suggestions, but refused to elaborate.

* * *

When September rolled around again, I won't say we were all ready and raring to go to school, but at least we were prepared. Instead of handing us our usual schedule of classes however, they demanded our summer journals and then crammed us all into the auditorium for an assembly. Principal Powers and near every other teacher I saw looked positively frazzled, as if they had been working very late last night. It was also fairly obvious that the principal had no temper left at all, and had Boomer shout us into silence before people could even get rowdy.

"Students, welcome back! We hope you've had a restful summer, because the staff has been working _very_ hard since we last met to your education memorable. We hope to make this year your finest at Sky High!"

Faint whispers echoed around the auditorium, most of them echoing my own thoughts. _What the hell was Principal Powers getting at?_

"As I had mentioned at the year-end assembly, this year you will be forming your own super teams. Half of your classes will be conducted as normal, but half of your classes, including all gym time, will be done with your group. We hope to graduate not just excellent superheroes, but super- _teams._ Today we will be forming into these groups and meeting with your guidance counselors to determine your new class schedules. This will take some time, but we will appreciate your patience as we work through this new system. Thank you," she concluded, and stepped down from the podium with a brittle smile.

Pandemonium erupted as nearly all the students began talking at once.

Layla was enthusiastic, practically as hyper as Zack because she saw this as the end of "fascist Hero/Sidekick dichotomy" and the start of an era of equality for all super-people. Will thought it was going to be the coolest thing since sliced bread because he got to spend more time with his friends. It was Magenta, though, that brought them back to reality.

"You don't really think they're going to put _us_ in a group together, do you?" she cut in sarcastically, and her words created a little bubble of silence in the chaos.

"What? Why wouldn't they? They know we all saved the school together!" Ethan protested.

"So? They're probably going to put us in 'power appropriate' groups. Warren and Will are so far above us power-wise that it'd be stupid to have us running the Gauntlet with them. Anything that'd be difficult for _them_ would probably kill the rest of us," she pointed out, looking sullen. Zack leaned down to put an arm around her, and Layla turned further around in her seat to look Magenta in the face. I was a little concerned over her outburst; she had been acting fairly depressed all summer, even when talking about having some success practicing with her powers.

"Magenta, what's up?" Zack asked quietly. She was quiet for a minute and then sighed explosively.

"I just don't want to be humiliated, is that all right with you?" she snapped. Something clicked in my head as I watched her. She was watching other groups of kids being called out by Coach Boomer with a twisted and bitter expression. I know I had worn that expression more than once myself… and what she had just said was an important clue.

More and more often during the summer I had found myself acting as the confidant and counselor to my little band of friends. Apparently Will and Layla had mentioned that I given them both advice back before Homecoming, and now I was the go-to guy for everyone's problems. All right, so I could read people really well, I had my Mom's lessons to lean back on, and I was a couple years older than all of them, but it still sometimes felt a little strange.

 _It's the Peace bloodline, you know it, it's your curse to be the peacemaker no matter what you want,_ my brain insisted. I signed internally, my brain was right, as usual.

"So, you think we won't fight them tooth and nail if they try to take you out of our group, Violet?" I asked her seriously. "So what if your power isn't in the same line as Stronghold's? Be thankful it's not, you'd get a swelled head just like him."

"Hey!" Will protested, but he was laughing a little too.

"If you don't want to use your power, fine. You're smart, so figure out something else you can do. Be our team pilot so Stronghold doesn't have to fly us all around or something. But we won't leave you behind," I said with conviction, fixing her with a dark scowl that brooked no argument.

"My name's Magenta, not Violet, Warren," she pointed out, but she was struggling to hide a smile.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Zack, you try to convince her or something," I said in an off-handed manner, tossing the verbal ball back into Zack's court. I wasn't going to try to start taking over his duties as a boyfriend, and she'd believe Zack more than me if he said the right things. Occasionally he could take a hint, and now that I had pointed him in the right direction, I thought he'd handle it pretty well.

Magenta had been starting to feel left out, or rather, left behind. Will was going to be the most powerful superhero in three generations, Layla and I had powers strong enough to take on any number of supervillains in head-to-head combat if we needed to, Ethan had gotten a lot more clever in using his own powers, and Zack was so endlessly enthusiastic about his own glowing that somebody would think, by the way he carried on, that he was more powerful than Will. Magenta hated her power with a passion, particularly because everyone in her family had the same power, but with different forms, all of them stronger than hers.

Being shoved into Hero classes last year and being made to run the Gauntlet had been really hard on her, and I was pretty sure Layla and her had spent more than one cry-fest in the locker room. _God, here I am obsessing over the relationships between sophomore girls. This is ridiculous_ , I thought to myself. _No it's not; it's being responsible. They're your friends and you feel responsible for them._

I sat down again as Zack and Layla started murmuring to Magenta, and Ethan wisely read a book and pretended ignorance. I gave Magenta a little smile when she looked over at me once, and she finally smiled back and started listening to Zack. I couldn't hear all they were saying over the commotion in the gym, but that was probably for the best. Will caught my eyes as I went back to crowd-watching and nodded a bit at Magenta. I shrugged a bit, and he nodded again. She was going to be ok.

* * *

It took us until nearly lunch to get our group called in to Mrs. Peterson's office. That would be Irene Peterson, a.k.a. the Stormrider. She was gray-haired and elderly, but Ethan had told us she used to be a very powerful superhero back in the day, able to use wind and rain as her weapons. She was the one that kept the worst of the weather away from Sky High, or otherwise the school would be in serious trouble from students blowing off the edge half the time.

"Ah yes…" she said, adjusting her glasses and looking over a pile of folders. We were all crammed into a bunch of little desks behind her massive desk, and Zack and I were already getting cramps from trying to fit our legs under the desktops. "The kids that saved the school at Homecoming. Excellent work that, really good work. Most kids don't get to save anything until they graduate, good timing in doing that… yes…" She seemed as weird as one of Ethan's elderly aunts, the kind that liked to pinch your cheek and ask you how your first grade class was going… when you were fourteen.

"I see no reason why having all you as a team shouldn't be a problem… all except Mr. Peace," she went on, tapping her folders even. I started and sat upright while everyone else looked alarmed. "You're a senior, and all your friends here won't be ready for proper graduate work for another two years. Did you want to join a different group? We do have some smaller senior groups that we're probably going to have to combine-"

"No," I interrupted forcefully, stopping her in mid-plan. "These are my friends, and I'll be sticking with them. If I have to wait until they graduate, fine, I'll figure out something to do in the interim." Mrs. Peterson paused, closed her mouth, adjusted her glasses, and gave a small polite cough.

"Well then… that's all settled. Here's your class schedules," she said calmly. "Mr. Peace, we'll discuss those specifics at a later date."

* * *

The new set of classes was definitely interesting, but easy they were not. While half the day we did our normal routine of classes both super and not, after lunch each group reported to a room together. Apparently they had tapped some retired teachers or other inactive superheroes to help with the extra class load, because I didn't recognize our teacher at all. She was a tiny Asian woman of about fifty that reminded me strongly of Mrs. Lee, with glossy black hair tied up on a knot on her head.

"Welcome, welcome, come on in… Let me see… Zack Cramer, Layla Evans, Ethan Howard, Magenta Patterson, Warren Peace, and William Stronghold, all here? Excellent!" she chirped cheerfully as we all filed into the room. "Does anyone here go by a nickname?"

"Will," Stronghold answered quickly.

"Right, right… well, all settled then. I'm Yoroko Richards, also known as The Pixie." She closed her eyes for a second in concentration, and a pair of colorful, diaphanous butterfly wings nearly as tall as she was popped out of her back with a burst of glittering dust. Layla predictably found this very cute, but then she was definitely the girlier girl of the two in our group.

"I doubt you would have heard of me. I was a sidekick to Sparrowhawk for about two years before I went to work for the Bureau full-time instead. I'm a researcher into super-power trends, and coincidentally I'm going to be doing as much learning from you as you are from me.

"I won't be your only teacher; you're going to have others over the course of the year as we cover different subjects. I'm going to be covering Basic Super Hero Genetics, essentially power families and heredity. It should help you understand your own powers, those of your teammates, and also help you if you're facing an unfamiliar villain.

"I'll say I'm rather thrilled that you're such an eclectic group, truth to tell. We have living examples of all the major power families in one room."

The power families, we soon learned, were Energy Producers, Shapeshifting, Mental Abilities, and Permanent Transformation, with a whole lot of smaller subdivisions within and between them to further quantify various powers. Zack and I were in the first group, Ethan and Magenta in the second, Layla in the third, and Will in the fourth. Though the idea of Zack and I being related in any way was enough to send all of us laughing.

It became clear why these classes were taught only in our small groups. They were, to be brutally frank, intimate. Some of the things we learned or revealed I wouldn't have wanted anyone to know but my friends. We talked a lot about what had happened when we first got our powers, which for me was not very easy. I was the only one to have first powered up in anger. For Will, obviously, both times he had been in fear for his life or the life of his friends. Layla had desperately wanted to see her mother's roses bloom in winter. Ethan had actually been really warm one summer's day and just melted (which ended up scaring the whey out of his parents when they found him). Magenta's first power-up had happened at one of her family Christmas gift-exchanges, and she had nearly been trampled. And Zack had just woken up one morning to his powers.

We ended up demonstrating our powers so Mrs. Richards could point out _how_ we were doing it, something that was a bit embarrassing for everyone. I mean, we all had been warned against just casually powering up for so long that the idea of just doing it on cue was rather strange. We did learn some interesting things though, like Magenta completely violates the laws of conservation of matter when she shapeshifts. She only weighs a few pounds in guinea-pig form… so where is the rest of her mass? Even Mrs. Richards didn't know, but she pointed out that Magenta could probably be holding a small amount of something when she shifted and keep it entirely safe, just like her clothes.

"It's hard for the supervillain to take his secret weapon back if you have it when you shapeshift. If they can't even find it, then they're going to find it impossible to steal," she had mentioned, and Magenta had seemed rather encouraged by that.

One of the harder things we did, for me at least, was our family tree. I had done a more typical one in freshman biology; the kind where you tracked which of your relatives was left handed, or had attached earlobes, or brown eyes. I remember thinking it was odd that they didn't have us put super-powers on the family tree as well, but at the time I was relieved. I ended up only tracking my mother's family for my freshman project, and that was done mostly through pictures and my mom's memories. I've never actually met Mom's family, as they were angry that Mom brought so much shame on the Peace family because of Baron Battle. Mom's been trying to mend fences there for years, but even in a family full of telepaths and empaths these things take time.

But this project was specifically a _power_ family tree, tracking which relatives had which powers. It was something I wasn't looking forward to at all, because I would have to go look up not just Mom's family, but all my Battle relatives as well. I had spent so much time being forcibly incurious about them that I didn't know even where to start. Luckily Mrs. Richards had both some ideas… and some surprising revelations.

"Now, most of you don't realize, but we've only been keeping close records on super-powers for only the last century or so. You're only going to find _official_ records back to perhaps your great-grandparents, at best. However, I know for a fact that nearly all of your family trees go back much farther than that.

"When you look at the collective lore of the world, there are thousands of stories about supernatural happenings, strange phenomena, even magic. Some of this is pure fiction, some of it might actually be real magic, and _some_ of it, is people with super-powers. When you read stories about powerful sorcerers that could destroy mountains, read minds, or shift form, or warriors that could wrestle giants, or nature spirits, some of these were your ancestors.

"Unfortunately, there was a period of time between when people stopped believing in magic and started accepting our powers as scientifically possible that was extremely hard for people like us. It started around the Inquisition, when people started seeing every odd thing as signs of evil. Plenty of innocent people went to their deaths, but so did several super-people, because their powers set them apart.

"A lot of the records were lost, and what survived was not always credible. We also have to remember that someone -say with a good knowledge of alchemy and chemistry, could have easily _faked_ having powers, and gotten put into the records that way. Also, a great many families simply began to hide having powers at all, and never kept records to avoid persecution. The few we do have records of are either those that were protected, or kept a very low profile.

"Mr. Peace, would it be all right if I discussed your father's family?"

I clenched my jaw in an almost automatic reaction to anything having to do with my dad, and then nodded reluctantly.

"The Battle family records are one of the more complete sets that we do have, primarily because they were the court 'magicians' and 'sorcerers' to nobility in what is now Germany for several centuries. They had the resources to hide during the Inquisition and resulting aftermath, and then were able to continue working for various persons of importance afterwards."

It was strange to think of Baron Battle's family that way, but I guess that made sense. Mrs. Richards had given us access to the Bureau records for our research, and I ended up learning a few things about my dad's relatives that I never would have guessed. They had apparently been superheroes-for-hire in Europe for years, with a reputation for great loyalty to their employer no matter what. God, having my dad put in jail must have been humiliating.

As the official records went, pyrokinesis was the most common power in the Battle family, with the occasional electrokinetic or cryokinetic. Apparently all the men in the direct Battle bloodline were pyros, so only the women ended up with the odder powers. I was the only male Battle in this generation, and apparently I was also the most powerful of all my erstwhile cousins. Only half of them had shown any signs of Hero-class talent.

My mom's family had some strange ones in it though. Her sister was The Dreamer, her brother was The Fearmaster, her mother was Heartsinger, and so on. The Peace family was all over the map with their power manifestations, though they were all in the same power family of Mental Abilities. And my mother was apparently the most powerful Peace on record.

It was concluded, to no one's surprise, I had the strangest family tree in our group. Every else's was much more direct; you could practically tell what they were going to have just by following the tree. Mrs. Richards had thought it was odd that I didn't have any of my mother's powers, considering that every Peace on record had _some_ kind of mental ability. I had just shrugged when she mentioned that; it was just my bad luck to get stuck with the Battle family powers, and I said as much. Luck had never played much of a part in my life.

* * *

The physical part of our training, however, didn't go so well. Boomer had us all running hard, lifting weights, and doing agility training until we were all ready to drop. Between this and our classes, it wasn't like we had time to wonder at the sudden increase in workload, or had the energy to protest. Almost against our will we _were_ getting stronger and faster, but I don't think any amount of preparation could have helped us the day Zack and I ran the Gauntlet.

"You'll be running the Gauntlet in pairs so you can get used to watching some else's back. Once I'm sure you're ready for something more advanced, _then_ I'll start running you through in groups," Boomer had told us at the beginning of the year. I had snorted at that, but quietly. It wasn't because we needed the practice of running the Gauntlet together, it was because _Boomer_ did. He hadn't had to set up the challenges to account for more than one person before, and he didn't want people getting through the Gauntlet too easily.

I didn't totally agree with Boomer's reasoning, but he was still the coach. If he thought that it would be better (for him) for two people to run the Gauntlet, then unfortunately we really had no grounds to protest about it. Truth to tell, having _anyone_ in the Gauntlet with you to watch your back would be useful, and if that person can take care of themselves, all the better. He ended up pairing me with Zack, because we were both in the same power family, and set us a time slot the next day.

The Gauntlet is set up in a chamber below the gym, and is designed to look something like a real park. There's an actual dirt path to follow, and several obstacles are real trees or bushes. If nothing else, it usually made landing a lot softer than in Save the Citizen. For most of the Gauntlet you have to climb walls and duck under brush, and the only enemy is the terrain. However, the more obvious and open you were about getting through the obstacles, the more the villains at the end of the Gauntlet would be warned, and the more difficult the rescue became.

After the walls and other "outdoor" obstacles, you had to span a moat, and then get into the "fortress." You had to thread (or blast your way through) a maze inside to get to a guarded citizen dummy. Boomer usually had two students armed with a couple of Mr. Medulla's stun rays as the only "active" opposition, to represent villainous minions. For seniors he sometimes had himself or another teacher you had to defeat instead. I had heard rumors that a couple times Principal Powers herself had been the final challenge for some particularly powerful students.

If you can complete the objectives of the Gauntlet, which is to penetrate to the center, grab the citizen, and escape again, you win. But the faster you do it, the better your score, because like in real life the citizen could be hurt or killed by the villains at any time. You also got points for creativity in finding your way in or out, effective use of your powers, for defeating the "villains" at the center of the maze, and for how "healthy" your citizen was when she reached the finish line.

Over three quarters of the students fail their first run at the Gauntlet, and rarely does a person finish more than three times in a row. The record for consecutive wins is twelve, set by the Commander himself when he attending Sky High. Despite its difficulty and more realistic setting, Boomer refuses to make running the Gauntlet a spectator sport. It's often brutal, and despite the fact that nearly everyone hates it, it's perhaps is the best way to get us super-kids ready for real rescue missions. If people were cheering for you along the way… well that would be nice, but it wouldn't be realistic.

Zack didn't have as much experience as I did at the Gauntlet, obviously, but he wasn't such a bad partner to have. I was stronger than him, and more agile, but Zack was both taller and faster. He had even gone out for the track team last spring, and had a fistful of medals in the hurdles and hundred-yard dash to show for it. He topped me by nearly four inches, and the kid wasn't even done growing yet. Also, dimming the lighting was usually Boomer's favorite tactic on making things more difficult, and Zack's glowing was a much steadier light source than my own fire, and far less draining on him too. As a matter of fact, when Zack was powered up he was nearly tireless, though it wasn't going to help him defeat our "guards" or get up those walls any easier. Mostly it just meant that he was bouncing off the walls during our study sessions when we were all ready to take a nap.

We both got stretched out and ready at the starting line of the Gauntlet, dressed in light body armor like in Save the Citizen. The lighting was already somewhat dim, and the temperature lowered, like it was near dusk on a late fall day. It wasn't enough to drain me, but enough to making climbing more difficult and getting across the moat a real challenge. I flared a little heat along my skin, going into the near power-up I had learned over the summer. The extra heat I was putting out nearly negated Boomer's little temperature drop, and I smirked a bit. _Didn't think about that, did you Boomer?_

A bell rang somewhere and we were off like a shot. Zack was already glowing brightly, and any attention we might be attracting further into the Gauntlet I was willing to suck up because being able to _see_ where we were going meant that we could make excellent time. Zack was leaping over some of the lower bushes without even breaking stride while I dodged around them. We clambered over some of the lower walls, ducked under low tree branches, and kept up a fast jog as long as we could. We were going to have to make as much time as we could here, because neither Zack nor I had subtle attack forms.

Almost before we were ready, the big wall next to the moat loomed up in front of us. Twenty-five feet high, this was where most people had their first failure. It had plenty of handholds, but still it was near-vertical climb. On the other side it came down on the lip of the moat, with only a sharp embankment at its foot to land on.

I hated that damn moat with a passion. It wasn't that I couldn't swim, because I could, and very well at that. It was because my body tried to warm up everything around me to its own temperature. My own body temperature would be lethally high to almost anyone else, well over two hundred degrees, and I was always surrounded by a little shell of warm air. But if I immersed myself cold water, I would be trying to warm up everything around me to near by own temperature, burning my own energy in the process. Basically, if I plunged into the moat I could forget about powering up for the next ten minutes or so.

There were ropes on the opposite side of the wall that you could use to swing over, or if you were strong enough you could try to jump. But if you missed the rope or had a bad jump, you had to swim anyway. The first three times I ran the Gauntlet I ended up swimming and had to rescue the citizen without my powers. I had to resort to bare-knuckle boxing to defeat my two "villain's minions," which at least surprised them so much the first time that it was easy.

Zack leapt for the wall fearlessly, and I climbed right next to him, not wanting to have to climb in the dim light. The paint scorched a little from the heat glowing on my skin, but I ignored it. We both cleared the flat top with some effort, and I started to power down a little so I could swing across on the rope…

I'm not sure what happened next, if one of Zack's shoelaces were untied or he just tripped, but I heard a yell as Zack suddenly lost his balance and fell off the wall. I watched in horror as he hit his head on the wall on the way down, and then his body slammed into the embankment and rolled into the moat. I didn't even hesitate, I knew the moat was pretty deep, so I took a dive from the top of the wall. I hoped Zack would just keep glowing so I could find him under there. As I dove I heard a blare from the safety siren, and knew Boomer had just seen what had happened on his monitors.

The cold water closed around me with a shock, and I felt myself bleeding heat into the area around me as I opened my eyes. Zack was still glowing, but faintly, and I swam down for him. I desperately tried to remember what I could about lifeguarding class; hell of a thing to save him from drowning only to break his neck in the process. Hoping to God I had it right, I got a grip on him and kicked for the surface. Coach Boomer was standing right at the edge, and carefully helped me ease Zack onto some level ground. The lights were back on and the temperature was already rising, but now I didn't even care.

Zack was as pale as cracked ice, and had a terrible gash in the side of his head that wouldn't stop bleeding. Coach Boomer was checking his breathing when Zack suddenly coughed weakly and stirred a bit. Boomer heaved a sigh of relief, but I was still shaking with reaction.

"Warren, stay here and keep him breathing, I'm going to get the first aid kit. Nurse Spex is on her way," Boomer commanded, the seriousness of the situation showing in that he didn't even indulge in my usual nickname of Hothead.

I was kneeling by Zack's side, so drained from the effects of the cold water and the rescue itself I wasn't sure if I could have even stood up. Zack kept coughing occasionally and thrashing a bit, and I put a hand on his shoulder to encourage him and let him know someone was there. If he was coughing, then he was breathing, and that's all I needed to do until someone better trained got here.

"Come on Zack, keep going, you can't be late for the bus man, Magenta would kill you if Larry tried to sit next to her again," I was saying, trying to think of anything to keep his attention on breathing. I was terrified that Zack would die and there was nothing I could do to help. I couldn't even warm him up… Then I noticed something weird. Zack had still been glowing, but when I put my hand on him, his glow dimmed a bit. Suddenly I felt fire flare into my hands again, just as if I had never even touched the water. It wasn't my usual yellow-orange flames, but a softer red, like embers. I don't know what possessed me, but I found myself putting my hand on Zack's bleeding head.

I could feel the renewed heat tracing its way through my own body, and then streaming to my hand and out. I could see a faint reddish glow, like fire, pulsing around Zack's head wound and somewhere on his side. More and more heat poured out of me, and I suddenly felt freezing cold. I couldn't seem to pull my hand away until the heat was done with me, whatever it was doing, and by then I felt like I had just taken a plunge into the Arctic Ocean. I managed to wrench my hand away before blacking out, only to see at astonished Coach Boomer and flabbergasted Nurse Spex running towards me.

My last conscious thought was something along the lines of, _What the **fuck** was that?_


	7. Conspiracy

 

I awoke some indeterminate amount of time later, feeling warm and tired. I couldn't remember where I was, and everything felt wrong. There was an antiseptic smell, harsh on my nostrils, and there was a faint beeping sound somewhere. I groggily opened my eyes to see some kind of monitor to one side, a line of light crawling across it.

 _A heart monitor? What…_ Then it hit me and I remembered; the Gauntlet, the wall, Zack falling, my plunge into the moat, the red fire…

"Zack!" I yelled, struggling to sit up. I was covered with wires connected to dozens of monitors, and they all began cheeping at me as I started moving.

"Zack's fine, just sit back Warren" Nurse Spex said. I looked around and saw I was in the infirmary at the school, in one of the private rooms, with the nurse sitting next to me on a chair. I was tucked under three electric blankets and wearing nothing but a hospital gown, I realized with embarrassment. "You were actually worse off than him when I got there."

"What…. happened?" I asked finally, my brain slowly starting to work again.

"Well… let me show you the recording from Boomer's monitors, it was pretty dramatic if I do say so myself," she said cheerfully. She pointed a remote at the monitor in the wall, and we began watching the Gauntlet monitor tapes.

_Peace/Cramer: Run 12/4, 9/20/06_

The monitors showed Zack and I skimming through the outdoor obstacles, and I mentally compared our time on the timer to my own scores. _Huh, we were doing pretty well there…_ We got to the wall, the monitor shifted cameras to show a top view, we both climbed, we reached the top… Here I could see Zack had turned to grab the rope and simply slipped. I gritted my teeth as Zack slammed into the wall and then into the ground; it looked even worse on the recording than I had remembered it. Then again Boomer had multiple camera angles with zoom lenses to catch all the action on the Gauntlet, it must have been a lot worse for him.

I saw my own dive into the water, Boomer helping me get Zack out… Then Boomer left again, and I concentrated hard on this part of the tape. I saw myself put a hand on Zack's shoulder, and clearly saw his glowing dim. Soft red flames flickered into existence along my arms and hands in the recording and… I looked really close to be sure… my _hair_ had been glowing too, the red parts of my hair had been on fire with the rest of me.

I watched as the red flames seemed to pour into Zack from my hand, and how the flames had crawled over part of his head and torso as I watched myself grow paler and paler on the tape. Then I saw myself collapse, and Zack awaken as Coach Boomer and Nurse Spex reached me.

The nurse turned off the recording and looked at me for a moment.

"You healed him," she said simply. I stared at her without comprehension.

"I can't do that; I just burn things. I have my dad's powers," I said slowly, shaking my head.

"You'd be surprised at what super-kids can pull off under stress," she said, "Just look at your friend Will."

I kept shaking my head. This was too weird. Besides, Will had just triggered the powers he had all along; he didn't pull out something radically different.

"Do you remember when you first powered up? What happened that day? Do you remember what you were feeling?" she asked insistently.

"I was practicing fighting in the backyard, I was punching a post… Some kid at school had made fun of me and I wanted to be ready to fight him on Monday. I was so angry at him…" I paused as something occurred to me. "I was _angry_."

Nurse Spex nodded, and she seemed to be following my train of thought. "Your powers are linked to your emotions, _not_ like your father's. Think, have you _ever_ powered up without being mad about something?"

I was silent for a very long minute as I ran through nearly every incident that I could think of… Cafeteria fight and all my Save the Citizen games, I had been mad. Same thing at Homecoming, even when Melissa had offered to dance with me, that power-up had needed an almost reflexive flash of anger. Even when I had lit the candle at the Paper Lantern when I had first talked to Layla, that had been annoyance. I must have looked shocked, considering the triumphant expression on Nurse Spex's face.

"No…" I said faintly, " _Never."_

"And what were you thinking when Zack was hurt?" she asked gently.

"I was afraid he would die and I wouldn't be able to do anything," I said finally. Nurse Spex nodded and patted my hand.

"It's extremely rare to develop new powers like this so late in life, but what you did wasn't get a new power so much as uncover a quirk of your original one. I think it must be because of your mother; your powers are linked to your emotions, and they're also _responsive_ to your emotions. If you power up when you're mad, they burn. If you power up when you're trying to help, they heal," she explained.

"But I _couldn't_ power up, I had just been in the moat! What happened when I touched Zack the first time?" I asked, trying to get a handle on what was going on. _I'm a healer now? The hell?_

"Well Zack's power is that basically he's a living battery; he just sheds energy all the time. Most of the time that just comes off as light or maybe as static electricity, but sometimes it can be used in other ways. _You_ mostly generate your own power, but sometimes you can gather it in from your environment. It's why you can power up more easily on a hot day than a cold one. Zack basically jump-started you. And then you nearly killed yourself in healing him in return," she explained, turning to look at some of her instruments.

"How did I do that exactly?" I asked after a minute.

"Oh, it was basically the same thing you do when you normally power up, just on a much, much smaller scale. Your fire was just going to give his body the energy it needed to heal very quickly on its own instead of just scorching away indiscriminately. Of course, we need to work on that control a bit, because you didn't know how to pull away once you started. Then again, it was just as well that you didn't; you saved his life," she said, writing a few things down on her clipboard.

"How is he?" I asked suddenly.

"Oh heavens, he's perfectly fine. They're all waiting to see you once I'm done making sure you're not going to relapse. But he was very bad when you pulled him out of the water… He had cracked his skull and broken his back. If you hadn't been there, Zack probably would have died. I took a look at his injuries myself… they were all neatly back together again, like they would as if they had been healed naturally for years. But the signs were there, and I know he didn't have those scars before today.

"But you! Oh you gave me such a scare! We couldn't get you warm enough with just blankets, so finally we had to stick you in a tub of boiling water. That did the trick. Try to power up for me now," she said with more of her usual batty offhandedness. I hesitated for a moment and raised my hand. I wanted to make sure I could do this again if I needed to… I tried to put myself back there on the bank of the moat, when I really wanted to help but didn't know how. Ember-like flamelets rose up from my palm, and I grinned in triumph.

" _Very_ good! Now, your usual way?" she said, and I let my anger surge forth a bit. Golden flames erupted from my hands and reflected off of Nurse Spex's glasses. She nodded, looking satisfied, and I powered down.

"Excellent. Now, you realize that even though you have a new trick, it doesn't give you any more energy than before? If you try to use both, you're going to tire yourself out twice as fast as usual. And if there's not a tub of boiling water around you might kill yourself," Nurse Spex said, looking very serious. I took a deep breath and nodded. "If Zack is willing to let you leech a little of his energy, that might help, but you can't _always_ count on that you know. Now, let's get you a cup of something hot and maybe some company if you're up for it."

I nodded to both, and soon found myself with a boiling mug of hot chocolate in one hand and all my friends on the other.

"Warren! Dude, that was awesome!" Zack said, giving me a high five as he entered, Magenta right beside him, her arm around him. That had to be one of the extremely rare times when she was willing to initiate a public display of affection, and I realized how shaken up she must be. Will and Layla were right on their heels, followed by Ethan a second later.

I returned Zack's high five, grateful that Nurse Spex had given me my own clothes back before calling them in. Meeting my friends in a hospital gown would have the height of embarrassing. I looked at Zack carefully, astonished to see that the ugly gash on his head was nothing more than a faint red scar. Had I really done that?

"Yeah, but next time you trip over your own big feet I'm not coming in after you. Do you know how many points we lost?" I shot back, getting a slightly hysterical laugh out of everyone. We all could use a little release at that point.

"Are you ok Warren?" Magenta asked, biting her lip a bit. I nodded a bit and took another sip of hot chocolate. One nice thing about being a pyrokinetic is that I never have to wait for drinks to cool down. As a matter of fact, the near-boiling temperature was just about perfect.

"Shaken up more than anything. You scared the hell out of me," I said, glaring at Zack.

"I don't remember anything dude. I remember climbing the wall, and then waking up in the nurse's office with a headache and feeling like I had just laid out in the sun for about five hours. I had to see the video before I'd believe 'em," he said in an offhand manner. I could tell he was pretty impressed, and he wasn't letting go of Magenta for anything, so I knew he was a lot worse off than he said. Watching yourself nearly die on tape would do that to anyone.

"I didn't know pyrokinetics could heal," Ethan said, looking back and forth between Zack and me as if I'd demonstrate.

"Neither did I. I still don't. Did you all see the tape?" I asked. They all nodded, still with varying expressions of awe. It made me profoundly uncomfortable, and I hid my face in my mug again. "Then you know about as much as I did. If I think of anything, I'll tell you later."

"Well, I've already discussed this a little with Warren, and if he wants to tell you what I said, he can. Though I will say that we haven't had anyone with any kind of healing powers pass through here, barring your mother of course, since… well… me! And I'm just a substitute for an X-ray machine," Nurse Spex said with an airy wave of her hand. "Though I'm not too surprised that you ended up developing them this way."

"Which way?"

"When trying to help a friend. That's how your mother's powers first emerged. I mean, you're the Peacemaker's son; I was sure you were going to get something of hers, and now here it is!"

_The Peacemaker's son. God, has anyone every called me that? It's always "a supervillain's kid," or "Baron Battle's son." If everyone could just remember that… That's a title I could live with for once._

There was only one person who really needed to hear this, perhaps more than my friends. Though just in case, I wanted them around to protect me.

"Nurse Spex, I need to call my mom," I said after a second.

"Oh of course dear, I can get a video conference going, what's her number?"

I wrote it down for her and she went off to make the connection.

"I need you guys to stay for this. I don't know what she's going to say… and…" I hesitated, not sure how to go on. They were the whole reason I had managed to pull this strange new power off. If they hadn't been willing to be my friends… I don't think I ever would have called on my powers with anything but anger.

"I dunno man, my mom's probably going to kill me as it is, I'm not sure if I listen to this twice today," Zack protested with a grin.

"At least she won't be yelling at _you,_ " I pointed out, laughing a bit. What was it about moms that whenever their kids managed to pull off some crazy stunt they were torn between hugging them and wanting to beat them senseless?

"Warren, I have the call up," Nurse Spex called from the other room, and the monitor steadied to show my mom, in her full costume, her face tight and drawn. "She's already seen the video. I have to confess I already called her earlier to tell her you were in an accident." I didn't even have time to respond to that.

"Warren! Honey, you gave me such a scare!" she exclaimed, clutching her hands tight. Her face was pale and thin, and I could tell she had been working too hard. Again.

"Mom, I'm fine, I'm all right. Really, I swear," I started to say. I could hear the girls behind me whispering to each other.

"Whoa, a costume that doesn't involve Spandex? I need to ask who her tailor is," I heard Magenta say to Layla, and then a few more whispers about breaking away from gender norms in costuming; obviously Layla putting her two cents in. I refrained from smiling at that, I didn't need my mom to think I had gotten a concussion on top of everything else.

"Honey, _what happened?_ " Mom asked urgently, and then her eyes flicked to Zack. "You really did heal him, didn't you?"

Zack shrugged a bit and looked at the floor. "I guess, I don't remember anything."

"Zack jump-started my powers. It was because I was trying to help instead of just being angry that it happened that way," I explained. "Nurse Spex said it was because of you, your powers."

A whole flock of expressions crossed my mom's face, surprise, confusion, comprehension, happiness, and sudden guilt. _She thought she should have seen this coming, that's what it is. That I could have powered up the first time in love or compassion instead of anger and rage. But she's happy I learned now, even if she couldn't have helped me in the past._ How could I blame her? How could I blame anyone? This was an entirely new thing, and something that I could have figured out _years_ ago if I hadn't been a ticking time bomb.

"Maybe it is," Mom said softly, "but this is _yours_ now Warren, purely and totally yours. Baron could _never_ do anything like this. And neither can I."

I took in a deep breath, throttling down the residual anger that memory brought up. The day I had first gotten my powers, I had remembered raging at the cruelty of the universe that they were just like my murderous, psychotic father. But this… she was right, it was _mine_ , this belonged solely to Warren Peace.

"Thanks," I told her quietly.

"So… are you going to tell me about it in more detail, or do I have to pry it out of you when I get home tonight?"

I relented and told her, and the rest of them, about what Nurse Spex had told me. My friends and I were going to be a superhero team some day, and they definitely deserved to know. Perhaps Will couldn't be hurt, but how much more confident would Magenta or Layla be if they knew someone in their group could save them in a pinch? Sure, we'd have first-aid kits and the best medical supplies and training we could get for each other, but in the middle of a fight?

I realized that also meant something else for me; I wouldn't have to be the flame-throwing monster of the team, not if I didn't want to. I had been unconsciously rebelling a little at the idea that I was going to have to be, if only in appearance, Baron Battle. Even if were using my powers for good, even if I was with my group of friends, I would still just be able to throw fire and burn or intimidate villains into submission. Sure, I actually _had_ morality and ethics, but the mental image was hard to shake. This though… this was completely uncharted territory. I think I was just about as worked up about it as Mom, though for different reasons.

* * *

Ethan, naturally, was the one that insisted on making yet _another_ training program for me. Though this time I didn't mind so much. As long as he kept thinking about it as just another new exercise, I wouldn't feel so entirely weirded out by having to master something so foreign to me. Zack had kept the whole thing as casual as he could, which was very, very casual indeed, but I still caught the others looking at me oddly sometimes.

I managed to figure out the way this new quirk worked a lot faster than I did when I first powered up. It helped that I was no longer twelve, or having to be taught by my father, or that I no longer had to get angry to use it. In addition, my friends were willing to let themselves be guinea pigs… more so even than Magenta. I was really touched by their trust, because I was far from comfortable with this.

But figuring it out didn't give me any kind of instant mastery. The big part of it was I would start out trying to fix something, end up getting frustrated because of one thing or another, and my flames would go from helpful to hurting in a second. It took fierce concentration and iron discipline, something I wasn't necessarily used to. I ended up scorching Layla when I fixed her sprained ankle, and accidentally burned the end of Magenta's hair when I tried to ease a shoulder strain. It seemed the bigger the injury, the easier it was for me to concentrate. The pettier it was, the easier it became to lose that concentration. Well… so it turned out I wasn't some kind of cure-all. That was fine. I didn't have my mom's patience to put to rights every single little thing wrong with the world.

* * *

It was lacking a week until Homecoming, and even our one-year anniversary of saving the school wasn't putting us in the best of moods. Despite the incident on the Gauntlet, Boomer hadn't eased up on our training at all; he just added some more safety measures and kept throwing us through. We all were too tired to protest, too brain-numb at this point to think coherently… right up until one study night at my house.

Our class at that point had been turned over to Mr. Medulla, who was teaching us Mad Science Power Enhancements. It was one of those classes that usually only seniors took, because by then you were supposed to know enough about your powers to not see those kinds of things as crutches, but tools. The fact that sophomores were learning it should have made me uneasy.

We didn't have any of the lab equipment here, but we were all drawing out schematics so we'd be able to fix each other's mistakes on paper before we starting blowing up the lab on accident. Layla was making miniature plant capsules, tiny, barely-grown seeds in self-contained little environments, something she could break and use if caught in a place with no appropriate plant life. Of course, her trick was to find a way to get the plant out in one piece once she got it in. Zack was making a ridiculously shiny trench coat out of some kind of reflective silver stuff, something that would enhance his glowing from merely visible to blinding if necessary. I refrained, by dint of a great exercise of willpower and Magenta's gimlet stare, from telling him he would look like Liberace.

Magenta herself was making a variety of stun-caps, something between a one-use stun-ray and a taser, small enough to be used when she was shifted. Her explanation for that was "if I'm shifted, I wanted to be able to do more than bite someone's ankles." Ethan was trying to find tools he could actually manipulate while melted. _He_ wanted to be able to disable traps or free a bound victim without having to be in his more vulnerable regular form. His melted form could take a lot more abuse than a regular person, and he wanted to capitalize on that.

Will was working on a protective pair of contact lenses, something to protect his eyes in flight. "My mom has a pair she uses, because she tells me that having a snowflake or piece of dust hitting your eyes while going several hundred miles an hours hurts like nobody's business," he had told us. Of course, his mom wouldn't let him study them, so he had to muddle through on my own. I was working on concentrated oxygen caplets, taking Nurse Spex's advice she had given me last year to heart. I wanted something inconspicuous, because toting around an oxygen tank would have been ridiculous.

I was going over Magenta's stun-cap specs, rubbing my eyes in fatigue, when Will ostentatiously cleared his throat. We all looked over at him with varying degrees of weary surprise. We were all living on caffeine by this time of the night, and all of us were so wired we had gone past loopy and into stupefied exhaustion. Any deviation from our routine of studying was greeted with vague alarm, as we weren't up for handling anything new at this point of the day.

"Guys, I need to tell you something. I had a really weird dream last night-"

"Uh… no. We're not doing dream journals until Superpowered Psychology in two weeks," Magenta pointed out, stabbing a pencil in Will's direction and not lifting her eyes from Zack's notes.

Ethan burbled something that sounded like a protest, but it was hard to tell. He was actually so tired he was in his melted form on my floor, lying on top of Layla's notes. He claimed he could read perfectly fine that way, and it didn't require him to have to actually sit up.

"It's not that. I've been thinking about this for days, ever since Layla reminded me about Homecoming. It's about Royal Pain… I think we made a big mistake when we defeated her," Will clarified, setting aside Ethan's papers. _That_ got all of our attention, and we all found a bit of extra energy to sit up and pay closer attention.

"Look, I- _we_ , should have thought of this last year, but we've all been too busy, and that's what got me thinking again. I mean, they've been pushing us really hard-"

"Dude, it's like we've gone from high school to boot camp," Zack said, nodding vigorously.

"And I think I figured out why. It _is_ because of Royal Pain, but not because of what we stopped, but what we _didn't_ stop." We all waited for the other shoe to drop. "Where was Royal Pain going to take over three hundred super-powered babies after she destroyed Sky High? Who was going to take care of them all? Who was going to teach them?"

It took a few minutes for that to percolate through our fatigue-drugged brains, but I could see the lightbulbs go on in everyone's head at the same time. A sudden fear clenched my guts as we realized the implications.

"She already _had_ her supervillain academy set up," Layla said it first.

"She could have had it set up _years_ ago… how long would it have taken?" Zack asked.

"How long was she out of Sky High the first time? Umm…" Will's brow creased as he desperately tried to do a little simple math this late at night.

"She was out of Sky High for five years before your dad defeated her. Then if we guess she really couldn't do any more plotting until she was able to talk again… say at two or so… So sixteen years after she was pacified, plus five after Sky High the first time, say twenty-one years to do whatever she wanted," I said after a second.

"How did you remember when my dad defeated her?" Will asked, looking a little surprised.

"The year after your parents started working together they defeated Baron Battle," I said simply.

"Oh… right. Yeah," Will said sheepishly.

"So she had twenty-one _years_ to put this supervillain academy together?" Ethan asked, resolidifing, his eyes very wide in his face. "Guys, pacifying Sky High at Homecoming was just the icing on the cake, not the start of her plan."

"And if the academy is already set up…" Magenta said slowly, "They might already be graduating supervillains, or be about to."

I swore. "They're trying to get us ready in time. This is a race against Royal Pain. Hell-" I suddenly thought of something. "Boomer hasn't been running us so hard because he's mad that they integrated the Sidekicks. He's _desperate_. He has to get us ready before her group of minions is."

Will looked unhappy, but I could tell he was also proud of himself for thinking of it. I felt like an idiot. We had all been so complacent, making the same damn assumptions that once the immediate crisis was over, that everything would be fine. _I_ should have thought of it; with my mom working the way she does, you'd think I would have considered it the same way. Maybe it was because Will had talked to Royal Pain face-to-face; maybe it was just the lateness of the hour. God knows sometimes we had come up with some brilliant ideas (and equally brilliant failures) after a long study session late at night.

Layla had been sitting leaning up against Will, but now sat up.

"Why didn't they tell us?" she nearly wailed. I winced a bit, but everyone's reactions were gone mostly to hell by this hour.

"Homecoming," Magenta said, her expression hard. "Think about it; you had a whole gym full of superheroes-in-training, and a couple dozen teachers who were all former superheroes, _and_ Will's parents. Yeah, everyone got scared when Royal Pain started zapping everyone, but if we had all rushed her instead of panicking and running for the exits we could have stopped her just by overwhelming her. _Three hundred_ students in there, and _no one_ tried to strike back at her."

I gritted my teeth at that, and I could see everyone else feeling the same shame that I was. It had really been a pathetic reaction once you thought about it. Royal Pain could only pacify one person at a time, and if even only two or three people had gone after her at once, she would only be able to pacify one before the others could attack her physically.

"No one had any real experience with a powerful supervillain," Ethan said after a second. "After they saw what happened to the Commander, they were probably wondering if there was anything they even _could_ do to hurt her."

"That's why they're making us hit the Gauntlet so hard, why they're putting us in classes about enhancing our powers… why they're teaching us in the small groups. They're… _forcing_ us together, trying to get us to work through the kinds of kinks and fears we'd normally have to deal with on our own. They want to prevent a repeat… They don't want us to be too afraid," I said carefully, going over our year so far in my head.

They weren't just preparing us physically to use our powers, they were preparing us mentally. Our power family trees brought out how we felt about our families to each other, and exposed weaknesses that we might not have known we had. Revealing how we powered up, explaining our power quirks to each other… The upcoming classes in psychology… It made far too much sense, and I could see everyone nodding as they came to the same conclusion.

"Well, I dunno about you, but I wouldn't want to be left in the dark about this," Zack said finally, glowing a bit to make a pun out of his sentence. Magenta just sighed and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Seriously, I think the other people should know. _I'd_ want to, and you think they'd be a little more… ya know, _careful_ if they knew?"

Will nodded again and sighed.

"Then we better go talk to Principal Powers. I mean, this is the only reason I can think they're pushing us so hard, but if I'm just being paranoid… I'd rather just ask her than tell everyone at school."

"And if it's all in your head, we get to rag on you from now until forever," I added, smiling a bit.

Our study group broke up for the night, but despite the fatigue, I didn't get a good night's sleep. I had terrible dreams, fragments of things I couldn't quite remember in the morning, but I had scorched the paint on my bed, so they must have been pretty bad.

Once back up in Sky High, Will wanted us to figure out a plan of attack before he took his conspiracy theories to Principal Powers. We really couldn't get any kind of privacy to talk until gym class, where we ended up spotting each other on the bench press.

"Look, I don't know if we want to just barge in there so she can't try to lie, or if we be good and make an appointment," Will was saying.

"If she's lying, I can probably tell. My mom taught me a lot about reading people," I offered, and I saw Layla raise an eyebrow. "It's not a power or anything, I just pay attention."

"Uh huh… sure," Magenta said cynically, and I rolled my eyes.

"I think we need to do it all dramatic-like; I mean, it's _Royal Pain_ , that's got to get her attention," Zack pointed out, and then reacted to Ethan's frantic motions to be quiet as Coach Boomer strode over to our group.

"I'm glad you guys finally figured it out. Now, say anything to anyone before the right time and I'll deafen you. Principal's office, all of you, _now,_ " Boomer said from behind him. All of us exchanged glances, a combination of triumph and fear. We were right… unfortunately.


	8. Guardians

 

Principal Power's office was large, furnished with not only her own huge desk but also three smaller tables and a dozen chairs. Pictures, awards, ribbons, and plaques, all of them of various graduates of Sky High, were so thick on the walls that it was hard to tell what color they were. One or two of the pictures were of the Principal herself in her costume as Comet Girl, standing triumphant over one villain or another.

To our surprise (though we should have guessed), Speed, Penny, and Lash were sitting sullenly in one of the corners. I realized I had barely seen those three all year. They all looked scared, truth be told; pale and tired, jumpy, with circles under their eyes. _Juvie couldn't be_ that _hard on those three. What have they been up to?_

Principal Powers had been seated behind her desk doing paperwork when Boomer strode in. She looked annoyed for a minute, but then he went around to her side of the desk and whispered something in her ear. The effect was electrifying; she went totally rigid and stared at us in shock, and then clenched her jaw suddenly as if making an internal decision.

"Thank you Boomer. I'd like you here for this discussion, if you don't mind," she said when he was through, and Boomer nodded, standing off to once side of her desk, arms crossed.

"Well… you certainly saved me the trouble of figuring out how I was going to broach our little secret to you. Tell me, what do you think you know? And when did you figure it out?"

Will took a deep breath and began to explain everything he had figured out and what we had talked about last night. Principal Powers looked surprised a few times, but she was definitely relieved when he revealed we had only known this for less than a day.

"I'm just glad you haven't shared this with anyone else, not even your parents. Yes, you're correct, Royal Pain's attack on the school was a culmination of decades of planning, but not for the reason we first assumed. She had indeed already set up her supervillain academy, but her class of babies was to be only the latest addition, not the first. Where- exactly- it's set up, we have no idea, but she was recruiting for it for years. She found kids that had superpowers but whose parents didn't, and she recruited the children of supervillains. She actually wanted to get you too, Mr. Peace, but wasn't able to locate you until you were already at Sky High."

 _Damn… wouldn't that have been a coup for her? Bitch,_ I thought, snarling mentally at Royal Pain.

"Her academy has been fully active for three years, and they're getting very close to graduating their first class. As you surmised, this is the reason we've been pushing you all so hard. We anticipate _needing_ well-trained super teams to combat her threat. Royal Pain may be in jail from now until she dies, but she is an excellent long-term planner. She invested in technology companies to fund her academy, and somehow found other supervillains or sidekicks to actually run the school for her _even in the event of her capture or death._ She wanted her revenge in one form or another, and if she couldn't get it directly… then she was willing to take it indirectly in the form of her academy.

"We found out most of this from her three accomplices," Principal Powers explained, and turned to indicate the three much-subdued seniors in the corner. "However, something has come up, something Coach Boomer and I have discussed at length since last Homecoming. It's become urgent though, in the last month."

"Where do they come in?" Will asked, looking over at Speed, Lash, and Penny. I didn't blame him, having those three in on a discussion about Royal Pain made _me_ nervous, and I didn't even fight her directly.

"Royal Pain had plans for them, if they were to be captured but not jailed. They're apparently a graduation exercise. There have been two attempts on their lives already," Principal Powers said with deadly seriousness.

"They _killed_ me!" Penny wailed suddenly, and burst into tears. Lash reached over and patted her shoulder awkwardly while Speed just looked uncomfortable.

"One of Penny's 'clones' was killed in the attempt and it shook her badly," the Principal clarified. "And someone tried to poison Speed and Lash at the detention hall. Whatever they used wasn't quite fatal, but they've been a while in recovering." Layla went nearly dead white at Principal Powers' revelation, and everyone else was looking shaken up. No one really liked those three, they were bullies and traitors without many redeeming qualities, but the idea that someone would actually try to _kill_ them was horrible.

"Why are we here?" I asked, already guessing the answer and not liking it one bit.

"You've already guessed the real reason why Sky High changed so much. You're the best team we currently have in the entire school. And you have the best chance of stopping the next attack. Both of the previous attacks have been indirect, and we believe the next one will be more overt. There are other people they could choose to target: some that they _have_ already, and we have them guarded, conspicuously, by superheroes.

"To be honest, they won't be expecting you to help _because of your history together_. I know these three have caused you grief, and that you fought them at Homecoming last year. I know you have no real cause to like each other. However, that will give you an element of surprise, because one thing Royal Pain never learned was how to set aside her feelings for others to do what _must_ be done.

"I can't make you do this. This will be dangerous, possibly even deadly. Whoever Royal Pain has teaching at her academy is making her students ruthless and violent. We want you to guard Speed, Lash, and Penny, stop the next attack on them, and capture who's responsible for it. Once we have someone in our hands from that academy, then we'll know exactly what we're up against.

"You would be given back-up, tools, weapons, whatever you think you need…" Principal Powers trailed off for a minute, trying to think of something to convince us.

"You're desperate, aren't you?" I asked into the silence. "You don't have _anyone_ else that can protect them if we don't, because you're spread so thin protecting the other targets. The _important_ targets."

I was turning eighteen in a few weeks, old enough to legally make my own decisions, but the rest of my friends were barely fifteen or sixteen! It was ludicrous to ask them to do bodyguard work against even against an inexperienced foe… but somehow I was feeling bad about Penny, Speed, and Lash. Those three had basically just heard that they were so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that they might very well _die_ in the crossfire of their former boss' war against Sky High. If there were other targets… probably teachers or former teachers, students that she had been in class with… all of them were older, more experienced, and now, better protected.

Principal Powers had the grace to blush at my comment, while Penny kept crying into her hands.

"No Mr. Peace, we don't have anyone else. Now, will you guard them?" She lowered her voice a bit, leaning forward so only we could hear her. "It's one of the hardest things about being a hero, you don't get to pick who to save." I looked around at everyone else. Our objections pretty much died on our tongues right there. We might be young, inexperienced, but she was treating us as adults, asking us to make a hard choice. This wasn't Superheroes Ethics class; this was real, as real as death.

We all looked at each other, and I saw the rest of them start to look towards me. I was looking straight back at Will. If anyone was going to be the official leader of the group, it was going to be him. I might be the one people kept coming to with their problems, but Will was the one that would make the better figurehead.

"You're our leader Will," I said clearly, and Will looked startled and began to protest. I shook my head and then pushed the hair out of my eyes. "You're the most powerful of all of us. You always think of the _right_ thing to do in a crisis, and then you just go and _do_ it. You're ethical, and people like you and trust you on sight." Even if I had wanted to be a leader, I knew people would be second-guessing me all of the time. The baggage I had from my heritage gave me a handicap in getting people to trust me, while the exact opposite was true for Stronghold.

"He's right Will," Layla put in, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Yeah man, you'd be good at it," Zack chimed in.

"Totally, and it's not like any of us are clamoring for the job," Magenta pointed out.

"You'd be awesome at it. And _you_ were the one that figured out what was going on here in the first place," Ethan added.

Will took a deep breath and blew it all out again. "All right. But we all decide together. Does anyone _not_ want to do this?" he asked. No one said a word. "Ok Principal Powers, we accept."

She smiled at us with pride. "That was a very mature decision Mr. Stronghold. Now, I believe we have some planning to do."

"I want to hear what happened to these guys," I said, gesturing to the three in the corner.

"And I want to make weapons' lists," Magenta said, right on my heels. "We're going to need them, because supervillains cheat."

Principal Powers nodded reluctantly, and Zack, Ethan, and Magenta went to her desk to brainstorm. Layla, Will, and I moved our chairs over in front of Speed, Lash, and Penny. I was just as glad that Ethan didn't want in on the conversation. It had been nearly a year since Speed and Lash had stopped dunking his head in the toilet on almost a daily basis, but that kind of humiliation stays with you. Sure, he had gotten a little of his back last Homecoming, but the memory of being bullied… well… I had plenty of those of my own to compare it with.

The three former conspirators looked like hell up close, thin and drawn, even trembling a bit with nervousness. I felt a little sorry for them, but not much; they were finally getting a dose of the kind of terror their bullying victims lived with daily. Sure, they weren't trying to kill those they tormented, but I could remember not being able to eat because I was so afraid, of trying to play sick from school so I wouldn't have to face the bullies.

If we had all been a few years older… well, when one adult intimidates another into giving him money, they call that robbery, not taking a kid's lunch money. If they push someone's head into a toilet or stuff them in a locker, that's assault and battery, not bullying. It had made my blood boil at the hypocrisy of it all when I was younger and unable to defend myself. I might be willing to protect these guys, but I sure as hell wasn't going to do it cheerfully.

"So…" Will said after a minute of my silence. I was just staring them down, enjoying the fact that the shoe was on the other foot. It was petty of me, I know, but I couldn't help myself. "What's been going on?"

Penny's crying had died down to a few sniffles, and she finally took her hands away from her face and began to scrub at the tears with a tissue. Lash and Speed looked at each other, and Speed finally took the floor.

"Lash and I were uh… introducing ourselves to a new kid about… um… a month ago. New guy, he called himself Viper. He thought he was slick, ya know? So we kinda… wised him up a little. Let him know he had to earn his perks. We ah… swiped his lunch that afternoon… and then spent the next two weeks puking our guts out and wishing we could die," he explained, hesitating in trying to explain something he _knew_ we weren't going to like.

_Assholes-! They've been bullying their way around the detention hall since they got put in there last year. Royal Pain knew they wouldn't change, idiots!_

"Viper… you know, I remember reading about a supervillain called the King Cobra. He could spit poison… and he was in Royal's Pain's first class at Sky High. If this is his kid, he might have poison powers too. If he _knew_ you were going to take his food, he could have poisoned it on purpose," Layla pointed out.

"Do you guys like doing that?" I said suddenly, addressing the three villainettes.

"Doing… what?" Speed asked, looking confused.

"Is it fun to take a kid's food? Why is it so damn funny to you to push around kids that can barely fight back? What makes dunking someone's head in the toilet more fun that just shooting some hoops? Why is it you'd rather intimidate some nerd into giving you his lunch money than watching a movie? Do you like the fear you see in their eyes when you come down the hall? _What kind of sick fuck takes pleasure in other people's pain?_ " I snarled at them, slamming my hands down on the tabletop. I knew I was going to leave scorch marks behind, but I didn't care.

The rest of the room had gotten very quiet, and I knew everyone was looking at me. _Damn Peace, you didn't have to get that out of your system right this very second, you know?_ I sighed mentally. _No, I didn't, but these three need a damn wake-up call._ Despite the fact that they were idiots, if they could actually help defend themselves, that would give us a huge help. Of course, we needed them to start looking out for more people then themselves, if at all possible.

"Royal Pain knew you wouldn't change. She knew, and the people she put in charge knew, that they could plant a new kid in the detention hall and you'd react that way," I said in a much calmer tone of voice. Speed and Lash were about as far back in their chairs as they could go (and in Lash's case much farther than that); their eyes wide, and Penny had her fist crammed up against her mouth in an attempt to hold back sobs.

"You know what happened to Royal Pain. She never changed, and now she's in a cell that she's never going to get out of, and she will never be able to use her powers again. You don't want that; nobody would want that. I'd _hate_ never being able to use my powers," Will said in a more persuasive tone of voice.

_Huh… well, I'm apparently already playing the Bad Cop, so if Will wants to play the Good Cop, that'll work out. We're cleverer than we thought._

"Ok, ok, Jesus, we get it!" Lash said frantically, snapping himself back into shape.

"You better," I growled, "because you don't seem to realize that you're bringing this all on yourself. If you want our help, you're going to have to earn it."

Layla was looking back and forth between Will and I, and I caught her eye and winked, timing it so the others couldn't see. She sighed a bit in relief and went back to following the conversation. I didn't want her to think I was going off the deep end or anything. Well… not entirely at any rate.

"We need to know more," Will said after a breath or two. "The Viper kid, is he still around?"

"No. Principal Powers asked us about that once we could talk again. He vanished the night after we got sick, and no one is sure how he escaped," Speed said, shaking his head.

"Figures. Penny, what's your story?" I asked. It took her three tries to talk coherently, and I was starting to feel guilty that I had been so intense. Penny wasn't just upset, she was terrified. Something about her was nagging me too, something wrong, but I couldn't quite pin it down…

"It was the day before Lash and Speed got sick," she sniffled. "There was this girl, Kristina, who was… she was new, and she got on my case. She wanted some of my stuff, she said she deserved it. I cloned so we could… ya know, get her head on straight. Then the crazy bitch pulled a knife out of nowhere and stabbed me in the gut! She laughed, she laughed at me, and we tried to get the knife away from her… It hurt so bad, I couldn't breathe, I was bleeding all over the floor. That bitch got out of our grip and just vanished into the air."

She started shuddering again, but somehow managed to keep from sobbing. I exchanged glances with Layla and Will, and Layla leaned forward to put her hand over one of Penny's.

"I'm sorry, we had no idea it hurt you so badly," she said, sounding like she meant it. I was surprised at Penny's bad reaction, somehow I had just assumed that if one of Penny's clones got hurt that she wouldn't feel anything, but by the way she had talked she could feel everything her clones felt. And if one of them had actually _died_ … No wonder she was screwed up. And I was wondering…

"You can't bring her back. You're always going to be one short," I said carefully, my expression softening a bit. Penny looked at me at astonishment, and nodded. She slowly tugged up her shirt, showing an ugly, half-healed wound in her stomach.

"It's an echo or something. I've never had one of me die before. It still hurts," she said, gave a short sob. Then I knew what had been bothering me about her. Something about this new power of mine _knew_ when someone was hurt near me, and it wanted me to set it right. It was like the night at the Paper Lantern when I had felt compelled to listen to Layla, just because she needed a sympathetic ear. _Peacemaker's son…_

"Let me help," I said, and calmed myself enough to let the ember flames start to glow from my hand.

"What the _fuck_ Peace!" Lash snarled, and whipped an arm around my throat. Will grabbed it in the next second and dug in his fingers, just a tiny bit. Lash blanched, and Speed looked about ready to jump in. _They don't know, he thought I was going to hurt her,_ I realized, kicking myself mentally for stupidity. _After that little speech, what are they supposed to think?_ I was impressed enough that Lash was willing to risk even going up against Will, considering what he knew Stronghold could do. Or what I could do, for that matter.

"He can heal," Layla said quickly, before the situation could degenerate any further.

"You're serious?" Speed demanded. He was standing protectively in front of Penny, his fists up. _So it looks like he_ can _think of someone other than himself. That's a good sign._

"Yes I'm serious. I don't like seeing her in pain. I don't like seeing _anyone_ in pain, whether it's from getting stabbed in the gut or getting stuffed into a locker. Got it?" I asked, starting straight at him.

"I know he won't hurt you Penny. You weren't ever my friend, but I won't _let_ anyone hurt you, ok?" Will said, holding his hands out in a peaceful gesture.

"Ok," Penny said softly, and Speed moved out of the way while Lash uncoiled his arm. Both were watching me like a hawk, but I ignored them. The ember-fire had claimed me now, and I leaned in to put my hand on Penny's stomach. The fire leapt out, seeming to disappear inside her skin, and I could feel it seeming to multiply inside her. She hissed a bit as the fire seemed to cauterize her wound, then sighed in relief as it grew smaller… then faded to a faint red ghost of its former self. The feeling of _wrongness_ around her was gone, and I pulled my hand away.

"Power up," I urged her gently, "as many as you're supposed to have."

The look of hysterical strain was gone from her face, and suddenly there were a full eight Pennies surrounding me. They shrieked with joy, congratulating the eighth of them with the kind of enthusiasm you'd reserve for one who's just come back from the dead. Which she had, in a way. I took a few steps back to get myself out of the crowd, and saw Lash and Speed looking at me with fear and awe.

 _Damnit, I have_ got _to stop doing this in public!_

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the Pennies shrieked, coming forward to hug me. I froze, not sure what to do, because suddenly I was feeling very claustrophobic…

"Uh… calm down Penny, er Pennies. Give the guy some air," Layla said, clapping to get their attention.

Penny powered down, leaving herself at her desk again. "Thank you, you have no idea what it's like to lose one of yourself. Most people don't understand my powers…" she said softly. Her eyes were suspiciously wet again, but with gratitude rather than hysteria.

"Holy shit…" I heard Speed mutter.

"Look," Will said, trying to bring the situation under control, "look, let's just get back to the matter at hand? Like Principal Powers said, we're not all friends… but _we_ are heroes, and heroes help those that need helping, no matter who it is. Right? Ok…"

"Guys, come on, we need you back here, we need to know more about Penny's attack," Layla said, waving for the two guys to sit down. Lash and Speed sat reluctantly, and Penny perked up considerably, looking a lot more composed than she had since we entered the room.

"This Kristina, did she escape from the detention hall too?" Layla asked.

"Yeah. I said she vanished into thin air, and we didn't see where she went," Penny explained. Layla was clearly wracking her brain for anyone who could fit that description… then she called Ethan over from his list making to consult.

"Hmm… I think I remember one supervillain who could do something like that. He was called The Vanisher, and could make himself appear and disappear anywhere within his line of sight. Maybe that's his kid, and she can make _things_ appear too," he said finally, after a minute's thought.

"Good an explanation as any," I commented.

"Ok, do you know all who she recruited before she went after Sky High directly?" Will asked. We poked and prodded at their memories for nearly a half-hour before we both reluctantly concluded that Royal Pain hadn't trusted them with anything of importance. They knew whom she was going to recruit _in general_ , but not specifics. She never told them where the school was, nor who the teachers would be. They were supposed to find that out when they left with her on Homecoming night.

"I think we can take it as read that she's going to try for you guys on Homecoming. She's pretty big on traditional villain roles and customs. Taking you guys out the year after her defeat would be appropriate for her," Layla pointed out carefully. The three nodded miserably.

"Full-frontal assault on the detention center I bet. We better find someplace for the rest of those kids before then," I pointed out. Will breathed out heavily, and got a notebook out of his pocket to start writing stuff down.

"So guys, can we count on you to help us defend you?" Will asked as he wrote. The three looked at each other in confusion.

"Duh, we're not just going to sit around. They tried to _kill_ us!" Speed snapped.

"We're going to need to run the Gauntlet together," Layla said suddenly. "Seriously, otherwise we're going to be getting in each other's way. And then we need to fortify the detention hall to make it harder for them to get in…"

Will looked at her sideways. "Will, it's in the Supervillains' Fortresses and Fortifications Handbook," she pointed out.

"You guys read any of that? Royal Pain give you any homework before you started at her academy?" I asked Speed, Penny, and Lash sarcastically.

"Back off man; you have no idea what it's been like. She said she'd 'take care of us' if we got caught, and we've been looking over our shoulders the whole damned year. I don't think we've gotten a good night's sleep since Homecoming. I mean, what were we supposed to do about it?" Lash snapped.

"Screw you Lash. You three thought you could get the ultimate power trip in helping to take over the school, and now you're getting a rude awakening that she turned on you. Some people deal with pressure like that their whole life, and _you_ were the ones dealing it. You reap what you sow. So drop the wounded-bird act, and stop trying to look for the _profit_ in this situation. Help yourselves by helping us keep you alive, or go jump off the edge of the school, because you _know_ she's not going to stop until you're dead," I shot back. I wasn't going to let them die… but God _damn_ they needed a reality check. Apparently even attempted murder wasn't enough to shake their sense of moral superiority.

Will was looking at me strangely, and then mouthed _Back off_ at me. Whoops. I took my temper in hand and kept my mouth shut. I could probably keep going on these guys all day if I wanted to, but that wasn't going help anything.

"Um… yeah. We don't want to make it look fortified… Layla, _you_ would be the best at last minute fortifications…" Will said, getting back to the task at hand. I simply sat and glowered at the three a bit, occasionally putting in a word as Speed, Lash, and Penny described the detention center and its grounds. We figured out fortifications and a few simple plans, and then got back together with Ethan, Zack, and Magenta to get their input. Principal Powers had a rather thick sheaf of notes on her desk and a slightly stunned expression on her face. I rather guessed Magenta's request for weapons had gone, "We need guns. Lots of guns." Of probably every type Mr. Medulla knew how to make, and a few new ideas to boot.

We hammered out a few new things with their ideas, and then Layla brought up the Gauntlet again. Everyone groaned, but no one actually said no. We knew this was going to be brutal, but we really couldn't afford anything else. If we couldn't figure out how to all work together, Royal Pain would have her revenge on top of the corpses of a half-dozen high school kids. And we were _not_ going to let that happen.


	9. Gauntlet

 

Boomer said he'd go get the Gauntlet set up for us, and everyone trooped out to go get ready. I grabbed Will by the shoulder before he left and pulled him aside.

"I have a thing or two I need to discuss with Principal Powers," I murmured. Will flicked his eyes back at her and nodded.

"Ok, meet you at the Gauntlet. Oh, and Warren," he added, "If I'm going to be the leader, you're going to be my second in command, got it?" With that he turned and breezed out, but I could just tell he was smirking at that little verbal riposte. I thought about going after him and demanding an explanation, but that wouldn't have looked very professional. I waited until the room was clear, and then turned back to Principal Powers.

"You put me in a very hard position back there, Mr. Peace," she said. She was sitting behind her desk, her arms crossed, looking particularly stern. I know I had pissed her off when I pointed out why she was asking us, specifically, to protect Speed, Lash, and Penny.

"You're preparing the entire population of the school for attacks by well-trained supervillains, but not telling them about it. You want a group of _sophomores_ to protect three of their enemies against _assassins_. And you don't want us to tell our parents before we go into a potentially _deadly_ assault," I countered. That Speed, Lash, and Penny needed protection, I didn't doubt in the least. But everything else left a bad taste in my mouth. Sky High was founded so young superheroes wouldn't have to be shoved into these kinds of situations before they had gotten control of their powers. This went counter to everything I had learned about the school.

Principal Powers looked angry for a minute, and then her face abruptly crumpled.

"You're very right, Mr. Peace. What I'm doing is inexcusable. I could be sending children to their deaths," she said very quietly. I looked at her with astonishment, trying to figure out what she was getting at. There was more to this than meets the eye, and I just needed to read between the lines. _She kept us in ignorance until the last minute, she tried to sound so cheerful at the school assemblies, and she had us practice using our powers, but only in private… Only in private…_

"Spies," I said succinctly. "You're worried about spies at Sky High." Principal Powers nodded, sighing.

"Speed, Penny, and Lash pointed it out themselves; if she had those three as spies, she might have had more. She might even have spies that don't _know_ they're spies, people in the right positions that just gossip a lot. I'm in a terrible bind here Mr. Peace. If I tip my hand and reveal what we're doing and the reason behind it, then her spies will know for certain that we're on to her. The less people that know about it, the less people can have it pried out of them. Very few of the teachers even know about it; Coach Boomer is one of the few.

"I'm afraid that if we told your parents, they would do the logical parent thing of trying to protect their children. If they did that, that would also tip our hand. If I just keep these missions looking like training exercises, I may be able to keep this secret long enough to get the rest of the teams more than halfway trained. Once they're anywhere near ready… then Royal Pain can learn about it. But if she learns before then… then she can drop her students on us like a ton of bricks and a whole lot more people will be hurt. I may already be letting her know by putting your group in the field… But there is literally no one else left, not even me.

"Royal Pain is a genius, and I wouldn't put it past her to do a massive misdirection either. She could have done this whole sickening mess of assassination attempts as merely a _feint_ in order to go after another target. Our old coach, Tom Wallace, is one of those we're worried about. He's the one that placed her in Sidekick class. Or the former principle, Robert Tanner, or any number of other teachers and former students that angered her. Another possibility is the simplest but perhaps the most disturbing; that she might try to go after everyone at once.

"Also there's the possibility that some of these attacks could be by other supervillains, entirely unrelated to Royal Pain's schemes," she explained, outlining her points with her hands.

"Damn… and you think she's actually directing this from prison? Or that this is just the people she hired?" I asked. The implications were chilling in either case, and the fact that Principal Powers couldn't act openly to save the school had my gut in a knot.

"Honestly, I can't even imagine how she could be getting any information out of Metroplex. She's not even allowed any letters in or out, once we figured out what she could be up to. Unless she's doing something particularly subtle, we don't believe she's involved directly. But Royal Pain has family, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She also worked with several other supervillains during her stint after her first time at Sky High. She had a great deal of time to do a lot of contingency planning, and enough resentment to detail our downfall in excruciating detail," Principal Powers pointed out.

"So you don't want me to tell the others, fine, I can see why. But I won't lie to my mom," I told her after a moment.

"Now see here Mr. Peace, you understand more about this situation than nearly everyone else, but I can't having you-." I cut her off.

"I _can't_ lie to my mom," I corrected. "It's impossible to lie to the Peacemaker. I thought you would have known that. So unless you're going to keep me from going home or contacting her, she's going to find out. And I'd _want_ her to. What if these psychos decide to do something particularly cruel and go after our families instead? Or if not _our_ families, what about Speed, Lash, or Penny's families?"

Principal Powers blanched in shock. Had she really not considered that, or was she just too tired from the other eight million things she was trying to juggle to think of it? Maybe it was just because I could easily imagine the worst in any situation; maybe it was just because I was younger than Principal Powers. The old superhero rules were fairly rigid, with classical solutions to classical problems. Poisoning someone's food or knifing them in the gut was _not_ part of the situations she had to face when she was an active hero. But if there were villains being graduated that were _our_ age… They grew up with violent movies and TV shows, horror books and video games. Like that film said, "Movies don't make psychos, movies make psychos more creative."

"I… should have considered that, Mr. Peace," she said finally. "Their ruthlessness isn't going to stop. But if you stop to consider everything that could go wrong, you're going to either wear yourself to a thread with worry or go insane. Those are my jobs. I just need you to help prepare your team to protect Speed, Lash, and Penny. _I_ will try to cover the rest of the contingencies."

I nodded at her and left, my mind whirling. I didn't want to keep secrets from my friends, but if they thought for a second that their families would be in danger, they would lose all coherence and go bouncing off all over the place in an attempt to help them. It was the same thing, on a smaller scale, that happened last Homecoming. Will had been poised to punch out Royal Pain, and then Layla and I had run into the room. Layla called out Will's name, and Will had taken his eyes off of Royal Pain to see if Layla needed help. That had given Royal Pain enough of a breather to power up her suit and knock Will off the school. I could easily see something like that happening to the rest of my friends if they got distracted at a critical moment. So I would keep this discussion a secret. I didn't have to like it, though.

* * *

I slipped into the locker room and began to get armored up with the rest of them.

"What did you have to talk about with Principal Powers?" Will asked me as he finished buckling on his chest plate.

"Nothing much, just trying to clarify her motivation a little," I said casually.

"'Clarify her motivation?' Ok, I'm not even sure what that means," Will said, laughing a little.

"Ask Ethan to explain it to you. And what did you mean right before I left?" I demanded.

"Well, I need a second in command. And you're going to be it," Will said matter-of-factly.

"Why me? Why not Layla? Or Ethan?" I asked.

"Because you're good at strategy-."

"Ethan's better at it!" I protested.

"You're good at reading and handling people-."

"I _scare_ most people on sight!" I pointed out.

"And you're my best friend."

I had no response to that.

"Call me biased, but the second-in-command is the person who would lead half the team if we had to split up. I want Layla with me… and not just because she's my girlfriend. I'm super-strong, and you're indestructible. If there's one of us in each group, then there's one person who can always shield the others from something really bad. Ethan and Magenta can make themselves too small to hit, Layla can make armor from plants, and Zack could make himself too bright for anyone to get a lock on him, but if a wall drops on them… you and I would just say 'ow' and dig ourselves out. They might die," Will explained.

I bowed my head for a moment, thinking that over. _He's right, he must have been thinking about this for a long time too._

"Ok Stronghold, I'll do it. But I'm not calling you 'boss,'" I warned with a faint grin.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Come on, Coach Boomer wants us upstairs in the monitoring tower."

* * *

It turned out that for a "warm-up exercise," Boomer was going to have us hit the Gauntlet in pairs, with two of us as the defenders. Once we "had the kinks worked out," he would set all of us as the defenders and bring in the second-best team in the school to try to get through to Speed, Penny, and Lash.

"I expect this'll take several days, but your normal classes are suspended for now," Boomer told us, pacing back and forth at the front of the room. "This takes top priority. Patterson, Howard, you're up first, Stronghold, Evans, you're defending."

"That's not fair!" Layla protested, and then clapped a hand over her mouth as she realized the stupidity of her own comment. Nothing about this situation was fair. It wasn't fair that assassins were targeting Speed, Penny, and Lash; it wasn't fair that _we_ had to protect them, and it wasn't fair to pit Ethan and Magenta against Stronghold. But life wasn't fair.

"No, of course it's not fair. But no one is stronger than Stronghold, and if they make a normally disabling strike against him, it counts, even if it doesn't actually do anything. Got that?" Boomer asked, and Will nodded. "Go position yourselves. Howard, Patterson, get your gear."

For these runs Boomer let Magenta take some tools onto the course. We wouldn't have all our requested items from Mr. Medulla for a day or two, but there were a few they were able to get a hold of. It was a weird bunch of stuff though, a thin oval of wood the size of a postcard, a roll of reflective tape, and three mock stun-caps.

"Take notes you guys, whatever they can use to get in, so Royal Pain's kids can, too. Whatever Stronghold and Evans do that works, mark that. Whatever they do that _doesn't_ work, mark that twice and figure out a way to _make_ it work," Boomer told the rest of us.

We got out our notebooks and glued our eyes on the monitors. From this high up our view wasn't so great, but the monitors had every angle of the Gauntlet covered.

"Have they ever even made it through this before?" Speed asked, pointing down to the distant figures of Ethan and Magenta.

"Yeah! Magenta's made it through twice and Ethan's gotten through three times," Zack said proudly. I gritted my teeth and saw Speed, Lash, and Penny exchange troubled glances. I'd run the Gauntlet nearly three dozen times, and completed it a little over eighteen times. Speed, Penny, and Lash had similar records, all of them pretty good, and hearing that they were supposed to be protected by someone with so little experience… Well, I'd be troubled too.

The buzzers rang and both Ethan and Magenta were off. Magenta had never actually permitted the rest of us to see _any_ of her Gauntlet runs, and we were all curious to see how she ran it. And since Ethan had been running her training program this summer, this was bound to be interesting.

They both kept up a steady pace, Ethan melting under low obstacles while Magenta hurdled them. Huh… it looks like she had been running some of _Zack's_ courses with those moves. Both of them were keeping to the thickest part of the cover, going for more stealth than speed. I didn't blame them; if they were going to have any chance of defeating Will, then they were going to need the element of surprise.

So far Magenta hadn't even shifted, and I was starting to wonder if she was even going to bother, or if her grand plan was to simply get through on brainpower. Wouldn't that be one in Boomer's eye if she did? The moat-wall loomed above them, and then we got the real show. Magenta was up first, and shifted as Ethan cleared the top right after her, leaving her wood chip out of her shift. Ethan grabbed it and tossed it like a Frisbee into the moat. Then he grabbed Magenta and _hurled_ her after it!

Zack made some inarticulate sound of protest as we watched the little guinea pig go sailing towards the cold water. But to our astonishment she managed a landing right on top of it and clung for all she was worth. Ethan dove in after her, melting as he hit the water. He surfaced his form beneath Magenta's "raft," and undulated them both to shore. When they reached land, we expected them to shift back, but apparently they had other ideas. Ethan kept oozing along, keeping Magenta cresting along on top of him, "surfing" on his melted body.

Everyone was staring at the monitors with some expression of disbelief or astonishment, though it was Lash that found his voice first.

"You've got to be shitting me," he said finally. Everyone else burst out laughing, and Zack starting whooping and cheering loud enough to deafen even Boomer.

"Knock it off Cramer or you're running next," he warned, and Zack tried to contain his enthusiasm.

Ethan and Magenta quickly surfed over to the fortress door and squeezed underneath. Then they began threading the maze very cleverly, using Magenta's sensitive nose to locate the right path. Ethan was managing to rip off a piece of the reflective tape and using it to mark every turning they took so they could find their way back easier if they needed to run. The rest of us were fairly impressed by their creativity, but our three charges were just looking more and more sullen by the minute.

Now would come the hard part: trying to enter the sanctum at the center of the maze and disabling their villains. Boomer wasn't having them rescue a citizen-dummy today, because the point was to try to simply get past Will and Layla. We watched Magenta unshift briefly to hand Ethan one of her stun caps, then shift down again. The two had been quiet and subtle enough that the defenders weren't going to get any kind of warning, which was what they had been hoping for.

They squeezed under the door, startling Will and Layla. Stronghold began to fly for Ethan while Layla was growing an ivy-bracelet she was wearing into a vine-whip… Then Ethan leapt for the ceiling, tossing Magenta up in the opposite direction, right above their "villains." Both unshifted simultaneously and came down like a ton of bricks, stun-caps leading. Ethan tagged Will right on the head, and Boomer yelled out, "Disable!" to show he had seen him make the hit. Layla took hers on the back, and Boomer called that one too.

The lights came back up, and Will and Layla started laughing when they realized they had been had. We saw them talking on the monitors, laughing when Ethan had described their unorthodox mode of transportation, but Boomer broke up the party by yelling at them to get back up into the tower for debriefing.

"Stronghold, Evans, your charges are dead. How did Howard and Paterson get past you?" he demanded as they came into the room. Layla and Will's expressions dropped a mile, and Ethan and Magenta looked stricken. _Damnit Boomer, did you_ have _to put it that way?_ I thought angrily.

"We uh… didn't have any advance warning," Will put in.

"We didn't protect ourselves from above, because we knew neither of them could fly," Layla pointed out.

"Exactly. You'll have equipment to try to catch people at range, but what if they're small, or too fast to catch, or able to fuzz out or trick the system? Warning is nice, but you have to count on _not_ getting it. Stronghold here isn't the only person who can fly, there are at least two other seniors we graduated last year that were flyers, and there could be others out there that Royal Pain recruited. And while you're thinking about flying, what about coming up from below? These two could have easily chosen a ground-based attack…"

Boomer went on and on, until we had picked apart nearly every aspect of what went wrong, what could have gone wrong, what might have gone wrong if the moon was full, and what we were having for lunch today. Or at least that was how it seemed. Fear had been subsumed by boredom, and we were all wondering if it would be easier to still be in class today.

Will and Layla went down next to brave the Gauntlet while Zack and I defended. Boomer had given Will explicit instructions that we had to be captured alive, but only Layla was allowed to touch us.

"When this goes down, Stronghold, you're probably going to be in an uneven battle with their strongest champions. Even if they can't kill you, they're going to distract you from helping the rest of your team. The best you can do is keep as many villains occupied and out of the fight with the others as possible, so I want people to get used to the idea that you're not going to be around to do everything for them," Boomer had explained without pity. He was right, of course, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. Will might be the one of the most powerful super-people on the planet, but he could only be in one place at one time.

With Will flying, Zack and I would have little time to prepare, so it didn't matter if they approached openly or not. Will was more than fast enough to zip Layla over all the obstacles, crash directly through the maze and into the inner sanctum in less than a minute. Even if Layla was going to be the one who had to capture us, she could pull in the plants from the outer Gauntlet course pretty quickly.

Zack had a plan through.

"Hey man, I totally got an idea. Magenta made me this thing, it's awesome. Light bomb, just throw it down and BAM! Nobody's seeing nothing, except me and you, 'cause you know I'm throwing it," he was saying as we made our way to the inner sanctum. He was holding a small ball the size of a cherry bomb with a red button on top.

"Uh huh…" I said, not convinced. "And what if you end up blinding both of us? I kind of need to see what I'm hitting."

"No problem man, I can't be blinded. Figured it out this summer, I can even look at the sun, no issues," Zack said confidently. _Huh… that's a useful power quirk… now how am I going to work this in around my own… wait, I'm thinking I'm going to be lobbing fireballs at them, but Will flies too fast. And if he can't touch us… the big problem is going to be Layla's plants. I need to stop them before they can get to us._

"Ok, that'll work… and I have an idea," I told him as we started to get set up. I ran back to get one more thing before we started. Going offensive against Will and Layla wasn't going to work, but if we went defensive instead…

When the buzzer sounded, Zack and I could hear a deep rumbling sound outside, and the floor began to shake.

"What the hell is that?" he yelled, as the pavement began to crack a little.

"No freaking clue, just get ready!" I called back, and closed our circle. My only "tool" from Boomer was a large bottle of oil. Layla would have to use her vine-whips to capture us, but if I were standing _in_ a fire and Zack in a _ring_ of fire, that would be substantially harder. The rumbling got louder, and there were several loud _bangs_ as we heard walls collapse. With a roar, the inner sanctum door was ripped open by vines, and I could see straight through to the outer Gauntlet. Layla had apparently called up every single plant on the course, and all of them had converged on the fortress. Stronghold was flying straight for us, Layla in his arms, writhing vines all around them, obedient to her will. It was an unexpectedly awe-inspiring sight, and I was frozen for a second.

"Now!" Zack yelled, and brought me back to my senses. I threw my arm over my face as he triggered the light-bomb. Intense white light beat against my eyes, and I powered up, putting one hand on the oil-slick ground. I heard the _whoosh_ of flames dance all around me, and some sizzling sounds as something dared the ring of fire and was burned for its trouble. I blinked away the glare, struggling to find Will and Layla in the wreckage.

Stronghold had grounded himself right inside the doors and was rubbing his eyes, as Layla groped blindly, her vines trying the circle of flame and getting crisped again and again. I suppressed a triumphant yell, not wanting to give them anything to target. A bright light was coming from behind me, and Zack was glowing for all he was worth. He still didn't have his Liberace-coat, but he was wearing the brightest neon shirt he could find, and both Layla and Will were wincing away from his glow.

I didn't want my friends to be in this kind of pain, but a light-bomb wouldn't last that long, and the blindness only for a few minutes. _We can't be caught, we have to pretend it's Speed, Lash, and Penny in the circle, we can't let Layla's vines in…_ If we could keep Will out, we could keep _anyone_ out.

"Where… are you? I can't _see!"_ Layla cried, scrabbling on the ground. I throttled back an impulse to break out of the flames and help her and Will, who was slowly trying to crawl in Layla's direction. _Damn… that was really effective. If they really were villains, we could get our three charges out while they were blinded._

I squinted back at Zack, who had his jaw clenched, his expression hard and closed. I hadn't seen him like this before, but then again I don't think he had ever been able to use his powers really effectively in battle before. He cheerfully talked about using his powers as a night-light, but he hadn't realized how much they could really turn the tide. His bright glowing, combined with the after-affects of the light bomb, was making Will and Layla's eyes smart something awful, and he could see the tears on their faces as their eyes tried to ineffectually wash away whatever was blinding them.

I saw him mouth _I'm sorry_ to me, and I raised my finger to my lips in a gesture for silence. I didn't like it any better than he did, and poured my frustration into my fire, burning another few randomly questing vines. The flames licked my shoes and legs as I stood within them, waiting for Will and Layla to regroup. Several minutes passed as they tried desperately to see, calling to each other, and finally managing to get together again.

"I can feel the heat over there on the right, I know the plants are getting burned. I think Warren's in the fire…" Layla said, and I bit my lip to keep from saying anything. I really didn't like this game anymore, I hated seeing Will and Layla in pain, and they were so lost without being able to see…

"There's just a big glow… Wait, can your plants come up from underneath?" Will asked her, staring fixedly in our direction.

"I'm trying, the floor's too thick, and the vines are just getting burned when I go in towards that light," Layla said desperately.

They even tried to stand and walk over to us, but the floor was so hot that they couldn't get close. _Damn, this isn't an exercise anymore, and we're not learning anything other than blindness is bad. This is pointless, why is Boomer letting it go on so long?_

"Stop the run Boomer!" I heard Zack call out behind me, "We're done!"

"Boomer!" I called, "We need some help down here!"

I doused my own flames as Zack stopped glowing. The remaining oil on the floor would be out in a few minutes without me feeding it. We stepped over to Will and Layla as the safety siren blared, both of us feeling pretty rotten. We had "won," we had accomplished our goal of keeping Will and Layla from getting a hand on us, and maybe had even learned something we could use in real life. Right now though, I was only feeling like I had just kicked a helpless puppy. A helpless puppy that could rip through buildings, but still a helpless puppy.

Zack was helping Layla up as I picked Stronghold out of the rubble.

"What can you see? Anything?" I asked him, brushing him off a bit.

"A little light where the fire was… what did you guys do to us?" Will said, rubbing his eyes.

"Light-bomb. It was my idea. I didn't know it would work that way! I'm sorry man, I shouldn't have done that," Zack spoke up, sounding a little frantic.

"No, no, it's all right. If it worked on us, it'll work on those other guys. That was a good trick," Layla said kindly, trying to reassure Zack. I think she was actually looking at a wall when she said that, but her sincerity couldn't be denied.

Boomer was down in a few minutes, a grumpy expression on his face. "There was no reason to stop the run," he groused, after checking Will and Layla's eyes. "They'll be fine in about fifteen minutes. Now, why did you call for a stop?"

"Because in fifteen minutes we could have been half-way across the city, if we were really trying to guard someone. A moving target is harder to hit. But since we can't exactly move in the Gauntlet, it's pointless to watch these two bump into walls!" I snapped. Boomer looked like he had just sat on a tack.

"Oh really? And why would you run? Do you want to take the fight off of your known and fortified grounds? Do you want to expose countless unknown citizens to danger from your unknown villains? It might be harder to hit a moving target, but it would also be harder for you to find cover. Get back upstairs," he snapped. I was angry and getting angrier. Boomer might be right about this, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

"Now listen up," he said, after repeating what he had said below to everyone else. "You might not like what you have to do to these villains. You're asked for a lot of non-lethal weapons, light bombs, smoke bombs, stun rays… and you're not always going to like the results. It's hard to see someone crawling around on the floor blind and not want to help; that's what makes us heroes. But in this case _you might have to_. Leaving the detention center grounds might not be an option. If you leave, you don't know whom else they're going to bring to bear against you. You don't know if they've set up an ambush they want to drive you into. As much as you might hate it, you're going to have to hold the center, not run from it. Always remember, you're stronger on your home ground."

Zack had his head down on his desk, and was clutching the tabletop with both hands. Magenta had her hand on the small of his back, offering some small comfort. Zack had never seen his own powers used offensively and aggressively before, and I could tell it was seriously weirding him out. And Boomer's talk about having to not just capture our villains but _hurt_ them was pretty harsh. Maybe it was because my own powers were so destructive, or that I had a vivid imagination, but I could see how that could happen very easily. The others hadn't really been put in a situation where they might have to seriously hurt someone before, except for Will.

* * *

Boomer gave us a short break, reset the Gauntlet, and then set Speed and Lash to go through. Over the next few days we practiced in pairs, trios, and quads, attacking or defending, in all possible combinations of partners. We worked out plans, hashed out ideas, and set up strategies. We also argued, shared stories, and nearly killed each other in frustration on more than one occasion.

Lash and Speed's "pinball move" was a natural for breaking up a close-set group of people, but it put them at terrible risk. Speed insisted he was too fast for anyone to catch, right up until Penny mentioned about Kristina being able to bring things out of thin air.

"How would you like to run into a knife at full throttle?" she had asked sarcastically.

Will was firmly against them taking an aggressive stance at all, something that didn't sit well with our three charges.

"If you go out after them, they're going to have you right where they want you. We're supposed to protect you, and it's hard to do that when you're in the middle of a fight!" he had pointed out.

"We don't need to be babysat, little Stronghold," Lash snapped back. "I can take care of myself."

"And here I recall you guys puking your guts out for two weeks after 'taking care' of somebody," I couldn't resist adding.

"Shut it Peace!"

"Screw you!"

"Guys! Please calm down. This isn't getting us anywhere," Layla insisted, coming between Lash and me before we could start exchanging blows. I scowled at him but backed off.

"And we're not 'babysitting' you," Will added. "We're supposed to protect you. You don't like it any more than we do, but that's how it is. Look, we have plenty of power between us… and you guys can do a lot to protect yourselves _without_ being in the middle of combat. What about that ring of fire idea we were talking about? What Warren did that first day on the Gauntlet? If we managed to blind as many people as we can, then Warren can keep you guys within the ring of fire while the rest of us try to capture everyone on the outside. Then you three can watch Warren and Zack's backs. Speed can run through fire, Penny, you could put a few clones on the far side of the ring if you needed to, and Lash you could trip whatever enemies you could if there were a few cool spots for you to stretch through, right?"

Finally those three began to get the idea, which was good, because our "ring of fire" strategy was the best we had so far. The combination of blindness with Zack's glowing was pretty painful, and even a pair of sunglasses didn't help very much. Boomer even tried it himself, to mostly no avail. He boomed us pretty well, just by targeting what light he _could_ see, but with Speed and Lash to run interference, and Penny to thump him if he got too close, we could keep him off balance enough for the rest of the team to wrestle him down.

Boomer had decided to _not_ bring in another student team to fight us during our final Gauntlet runs, claiming Principal Powers had deemed it too risky. Boomer and Powers themselves, along with two other teachers, Hurricane and Pulsar, were our final challenge. Hurricane's powers were wind control, which nearly grounded Will and made it harder for Layla to get her vine-barricades in place. Principal Powers' comet-form was bright and nearly impossible to hit, and Pulsar's heat-blasts and Boomer's sonic booms were enough to blast through even my flame-circle.

However, the blindness trick kept working, and we had gotten the timing down pretty well. Four experienced teachers went from nearly kicking our asses to running into walls when Zack set it off. Layla had set up vine-barriers for them to force their way through, only to have it half blown, half burned, and half shredded before we were even ready. Will flew in to tackle Principal Powers herself, knowing she was both the most powerful and the most mobile, and was blown into one of the walls as Hurricane focused his power on him.

 _Note to self: Principal Powers is not affected by wind in her comet-form_ , my brain noted calmly. I used whatever wind came my way, trying to enhance the oil-fueled flames higher instead of letting them flatten out. Pulsar dodged Ethan, turning her heat-blasts on him and catching him in mid-jump. I actually heard a sizzling sound, like something frying, and clenched my teeth hard to remind myself to hold my position. I was the guardian at the gate, and if I ran off to try to help I was going to end up leaving Speed, Penny, and Lash without protection. But such considerations didn't stop _them_ as much.

Penny cloned beyond the ring briefly when Pulsar ran closer, giving her one high kick to the head before snapping back behind the firewall. Pulsar looked surprised, and shook her head as she gathered herself for a heat blast to collapse the wall. There was a loud _boom_ off to our right, cut off suddenly, and I spared a glance to see a triumphant guinea pig on top of Boomer's crumpled form. Our gym teacher was now experiencing the full glory of an active stun-cap, and I spared a half-grin.

"Now!" Zack yelled behind me, and there was a break in the tempo of battle as we all covered our eyes. The light exploded from behind me, and Pulsar's heat-blast hit me in the side. It seemed warm even to me: not enough to hurt, but definitely enough for me to feel it. Half the firewall collapsed, and I started to move to cover my three charges. _Damnit, she got a blast off before Zack got her…_ There was another soft _whump_ off to my right, and I realized Pulsar had only hit me by luck. She was scrubbing at her eyes with one hand and had her other out before her to ward off danger. Zack's bright glow was working its usual magic, and she winced away from us.

"Speed," I called, and reignited the circle. A blur whirled by me, then by Pulsar, and back again, knocking her on her seat. A loud roaring sound caught our attention as vines rocketed skyward on our other side. Hurricane was caught in the wind-whipped foliage, struggling as Layla directed her plants from below. _Boomer down, Hurricane caught, Pulsar disabled for the time being, where's Powers?_

A bright light from above caught my attention, and I watched with wide eyes as I saw Will, his hands clutching the bright center of Powers comet-form, hurling towards the unforgiving ground like a meteorite. _Holy shit!_ I thought, my gaze locked on the pair.

"Warren, Pulsar!" Lash yelled in my ear. He slipped his arm through a chink in the firewall and knocked Pulsar's feet out from under her again. There was an odd squishing sound as she fell… and then I saw her stiffen with a stun-reaction. A much-subdued Ethan oozed out from under her and resolidified, his skin peeling and cracked from Pulsar's heat-blast.

I heard a yell from above me, "Incoming!" and barely had time to duck before Will and Principal Powers hit dead center in the flame circle. Speed, Lash, Penny, and Zack barely made it out of the way in time, and we were all blown to the ground by the force. Will eased up a little, but still kept a grip on Powers' shirt.

"Jesus Will, did you kill her?" Lash asked, prying himself out of the ground with a rubbery _snap_.

"Uh… no?" Will said uncertainly. Principal Powers opened her eyes and rubbed at them a bit.

"I yield," she said in an exhausted tone of voice. "Good work children."

Will waited another few minutes for Pulsar, Boomer, and Hurricane to be gathered together, all bound or stunned, before letting her go. Boomer and Pulsar came out of their stunning five minutes later, with a bit of a headache but not much worse for the wear.

"Well, I'll say I'm impressed. Good use of tactics, excellent teamwork, and you protected your charges quite effectively," Powers was saying to us as we finished picking ourselves up.

"But a lot of that was luck," Boomer added, brushing dust off of his sleeves.

"So how are we supposed to compensate for that?" Lash asked sarcastically. Principal Powers sighed and looked sideways at Boomer.

"He's just stating the obvious. Just be prepared to be flexible. Your light trick is pretty clever, and not one that I've seen used very often, but you don't know how effective it's going to be in a less controllable environment. Make sure you have your backup plan is in place; that's all you can do," Powers said wearily.

Will was cracking his knuckles, trying to get his joints back in place after hitting the ground so hard, and the rest of the group was half-collapsed with exhaustion. We were bone-tired after this last run, and if we hadn't been so keyed up with what this was really for, we might have protested.

"I think you're ready as you're going to get kids," Boomer told us, catching each of our gazes as he spoke. "Just be careful."

"We won't let you down," Will said, not to Boomer, but to Speed, Penny, and Lash. Those three looked at each other, and then back at Will with some surprise.

"Thanks," Penny said finally, and the other two nodded. They might have been idiots, but they had stuck to their jobs of watching my back in the fire-circle. Somehow they had gotten it through their skulls that we were their only hope, and were acting accordingly. _Please… just let us get them through this in one piece…_

* * *

_Four days ago…_

I was waiting in my own living room, almost as nervous as the day last year when I had been in the cafeteria fight. Mom was coming home in a few minutes, and I was trying to figure out what to tell her, or how.

_"Hi Mom, hey Principal Powers wants us to guard the lives of the three students helped sabotage the school last fall. Sounds like fun, right?"_

" _I got my first assignment today. Me and all my friends are going to guard some of our enemies against deadly assassins, isn't that great?"_

" _So Speed, Lash, and Penny walked into a bar…"_

Damn, this wasn't going to go well.

I _still_ wasn't sure exactly what to say when my Mom came through the door, but she made a beeline right for me, her expression alarmed.

"Warren, what in the world is going on? I could feel your distress from outside!" she demanded, sitting down next to me.

"I…" I hesitated, "We got our first assignment today."

"You mean, you did, your friends are still too young…" She had meant to make that a question, but she knew already from the tone of my voice that I had mean _all_ of us.

"It's Royal Pain; she had gotten her supervillain academy up and running before last Homecoming. Whoever she's got running it is setting her students up with lethal graduation exercises. They've been trying to take out Speed, Lash, and Penny. We've been asked to guard them on Homecoming night," I got out.

"But _why_ you kids-? Spies," she said suddenly, picking up on my distress.

"Yeah. If she puts superheroes in charge of guarding them, even if she had any to spare, she'd be letting them know she knows. She's afraid the academy would bring on all their students at once, and no one else at the school is really ready," I explained.

"My God Warren… I never thought I'd see the day where we couldn't protect our own kids at school…" she whispered. "This is ludicrous. And you… you weren't even supposed to tell me, were you?" I shook my head.

"No, but I told Principal Powers I couldn't lie to you so I would have to tell you. I _wouldn't_ lie to you, not about this. The others… well, their parents would hear about this and-."

"Try to keep their kids as far away as possible; it's only logical," Mom nodded, and looked down at the floor for a minute. "They'd be acting selfishly if they did that, you know. It must be ripping Veronica apart to have to send you instead of going herself. But what would she have been doing next graduation? Most superkids get into life-and-death situations when they're eighteen… but I don't know how an arbitrary age is any way to measure heroism."

"I don't know… It's not like they can't handle this, but they're only sixteen!" I pointed out, feeling sick to my stomach.

"Back before Sky High a lot of kids had to leap right into the hero business the minute they powered up, without the benefit of your kind of training and education. I'm not saying it was the best way to do things, but somehow they managed to survive long enough to have kids of their own.

"It's not the best way to do this. I can scarcely believe that Veronica Powers is tapping sophomores to help, but if she truly feels she has no choice…" Mom explained, still looking miserable, but also resigned. I reached over and gave her a hard hug, not wanting to let go.

"I'm scared," I said finally, "Will wants me to be the second-in-command, the other protector in the group. I… just…"

"You're afraid you might fail you friends," Mom whispered gently.

"Yeah."

"If you _weren't_ afraid for them in this situation, you wouldn't be human. Warren, I understand why you told me, and why you don't want me to tell anyone else. And I promise, I won't go charging around like a fool if things get tough. That's just what a villain would want. Just be _careful!_ " she said, holding me tightly.

I could only hope she was right.


	10. Homecoming

 

"You know, last year at this time I was trying to decide how to do my hair and which dress I wanted to wear," Layla commented nervously.

"Well now you get to decide which Kevlar vest you want to wear and how you're going to get the com-set on your head without messing _up_ your hair," Magenta quipped back.

We were in the gym at the Maxville Youth Detention Center, newly cleared out for our pending battle. I don't know how Principal Powers got the administration convinced to move all the juvie kids, nor where she put them, but the place was empty now. We had decided not to overlook the blindingly obvious when asked for our lists of gear from the school, and now had a small mountain of stuff spread out for us to use. Kevlar vests and as much body armor as we wore on the Gauntlet were the first to go on. It would be just our luck if one of Royal Pain's kids brought something as simple as a plain old gun to this fight.

Communications sets were our next thing. With a total of nine of us that were going to be spread out all over the center, we couldn't communicate just by yelling. Speed, Penny, Lash, Zack, and I would be confined by the ring of fire, but everyone else was going to be a lot more mobile, Will in particular. Zack had his light-bombs, of course and Magenta had her stun-caps. Ethan was on the roof setting up some cameras, while Will was flying up near the ceiling to set up a large screen. The "ring of fire" group was going to be pinned down in the gym, but we still needed to see what was going on outside.

Maybe a smaller room might have been more defensible for the fire-ring, but the heat alone would have killed anyone but me. Maybe outside there would be less danger of that, but it gave us less control over where someone could attack us. Setting it up in the gym was our best compromise.

"Ethan, I have the screen set up," I heard Will say. Then Ethan's voice came back, telling Will how to turn the projector on. After a few minutes, we finally had some clear pictures of the front of the center and the road leading up to it.

"We're good Ethan," I called, "I can see everything."

"Ok, I'll be back in in a minute."

Zack had finally gotten his silver coat, and was wearing it very proudly as he finished gearing up. Mr. Medulla had apparently approved our specs for our final science projects, and delivered them with the rest of the gear as a gift. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing every time I looked at him. He looked like he was wearing aluminum foil, like he was a giant, foil-wrapped string bean. With a cotton ball on top.

"So… you and the hippie chick were making drugs in science class?" Speed asked me casually. He was leaning back against the wall, having geared up in approximately one second flat. Since Layla and I had taken small bottles of something that rattled out of Mr. Medulla's box, it was understandable, but Layla just gave him a withering look.

"They're plants, little miniature seedlings in capsules," she explained, exasperated.

"What about you Peace? Hair dye?" I counted mentally to ten before I could answer without snarling. Twice. In Mandarin.

"No, oxygen caplets," I said in a perfectly level tone of voice.

"Huh?"

"Remember that little vortex trick you pulled the last time we played Save the Citizen? I wanted to avoid a repeat," I explained, my teeth gritted.

"Oh yeah. That was pretty sweet, wasn't it?" he said, and Lash stretched his arm over for a high five.

"I think I remember you losing that fight, don't you Stronghold?" I asked in a louder tone of voice. Will flew down from the ceiling and landed, casually crossing his arms as he pretended to think about it.

"Yeah, I think I remember tying you to a pole and then crashing you both into the barrier," Will said thoughtfully to Lash.

Lash and Speed both looked sullen, and Penny gave an exasperated sigh.

"You know, you two could find some other way to pass the time instead of macho posturing," she pointed out, finishing strapping on her greaves.

I tried to ignore them both and went back to putting on the last of my armor. Those three were nervous… ok, terrified, and they were refusing to show it. If it was easier on them to make quips and jokes… I couldn't blame them.

"It was a pretty good trick," I said as I finished tightening the last of the buckles. Speed looked at me oddly, as if trying to figure out if I was pulling his leg. "Hurt like hell though."

"I uh… it always works pretty well. Worked _really_ well on you," Speed said casually.

"It's because I have fire-powers. I need more air than other people. Hence the oxygen caplets," I told him. "If anyone that comes after us tonight is like that, do the same thing; that'll down 'em for sure."

Speed raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah, fine, I can do that."

"But only if I say so. I'm serious," I added as Speed looked about ready to protest. "You know the second you break that barrier you're in trouble, because no one here can catch you. _They_ might have someone who can. _I_ need you feeding the barrier-flames unless I say otherwise."

He nodded and started to look depressed. All three of them had to be scared out of their minds. They all had stronger powers than three of the people that were supposed to be protecting them, but they weren't allowed directly help in their own defense. Speed's job was to keep fueling the flame-barrier, while Lash and Penny were supposed to help keep people away from Zack and I if they got too close. I was going to be the closest to the edge, and if I had to stop fueling the flames to start throwing fireballs, I had to count on those three to keep the circle going and watch our backs.

Zack was our living light-bomb, his ridiculous silver coat multiplying his own power several times over, and giving us enough bright light to fight by even if they cut the power. Unfortunately, if he was under stress, he could get a little too bright for anyone except himself to see clearly. That could put us in the same boat as our enemies after we triggered the real light-bombs. Well, at least we had practiced that situation a little; our enemies wouldn't have.

Besides, we had had another trick up our sleeves, literally. One of Magenta's requests from Mr. Medulla had been stun-rays, and now Zack and the rest of us were packing heat. None of us were very good shots, and we really didn't even anticipate using them if we didn't have to. All it would take would be for one person to use them, and then our enemies might try to take them from us. Or, God help us, if there was a technopath in the group they could make the things fall apart, reverse, or blow up. But if everyone else got blinded, at least Zack could _do_ something other than stand there.

Traditionally stun-rays were the domain of the intelligent but weak superheroes and supervillains like Mr. Medulla. Strong ones like Will or I would never be seen with them, because it wasn't considered "fair." For years the superpowered world had played by an unwritten set of rules that governed how you fought, what weapons which people used, who got taken hostage, and dozens of other things. Now we were entering uncharted territory. Royal Pain had broken from tradition and shattered the old rules last year, and had her own brand of "fair" taught to her students, a kind of fair that thought nothing of sneaky, underhanded, and vicious attacks.

I hadn't agreed with the old superhero rules even when I had been learning them my first few years at Sky High. I didn't even like the idea of these unknown enemies coming to us. If we had known where they were, I would have suggested ambushing _them!_ They did not deserve a fair warning; they didn't deserve a fair _anything_. Poison and gut-stabbings hadn't earned them any sympathy from me, even if their victims were bullies.

"It's starting to get dark. We better get outside," Will commented a few minutes later. Everyone else was geared up and ready to go, and we all kind of stared awkwardly at each other for a minute. We were scared, I knew it; terrified that we wouldn't be able to make it through tonight. No one wanted to leave this room; no one even wanted to move…

"Group hug!" Layla said suddenly, startling a laugh out of all of us. Us guys groaned a bit, but Layla practically shoved us all together, Kevlar-to-Kevlar, for a brief embrace. Ethan and I pretended not to notice when the two couples exchanged kisses.

"Ok, ok, let's get in position," Will said finally. All of our information and best guesses had the attack coming after nightfall, and we had to be ready by then.

"Be careful," I added, stepping back into my circle. Magenta, Ethan, Layla, and Will left the gym, and now we were only connected by our voices on the com sets. I lifted my head to the screen, seeing Will take to the sky, while Magenta, Ethan, and Layla hid on the roof. The easiest way for them to not be hit was to simply not be in the line of fire at all. Layla could direct her plants quite easily from the roof, and Ethan and Magenta could drop down fairly safely in their shifted forms if they had to. It was their job to make getting into the detention center as difficult as possible. If we were very lucky, Layla might be able to wrap up our enemies in vines before they got within a hundred yards. We couldn't count on that, but that was our best-case scenario.

I turned to look back at Speed, Lash, and Penny, only to find them staring at Zack and I.

"What?" I asked.

"Why are you doing this?" Penny asked finally. "Why help us?"

"Dude, haven't you been listening? These guys, whoever they are, they're punks. We're not going to let them win. 'Cause that would suck," Zack said absently, most of his attention on Magenta.

"Isn't it a little late to be asking that anyway? If you want to talk us out of it, you should have done it a week ago. Besides, I think Will pretty much covered all the reasons on our last Gauntlet run," I replied.

"I don't get you," Lash said out of the blue. "I don't. We stuffed _him,"_ he pointed at Zack, "In a locker, and now we're supposed to watch his back? And you're trusting us to do that?" He stood with his armed crossed.

"Principal Powers said something to us the day we met in her office. She said, 'you don't get to choose who to save. It's one of the hardest things about being a hero,'" I commented.

"Bullshit. You don't really believe that crap, do you?" Speed asked sharply. A light bulb went off in my head.

"You don't, that's it right? You don't believe you can make a difference. You don't think that your powers are really good for anything other than a few party tricks or getting yourself out of a bad situation," I said quietly, looking each of them in the eye. They squirmed a bit and looked away.

"Dudes, I should be the one thinking that. Seriously. What do I do? I just glow, that's it. But it's cool, because I got my boys around. And even if I don't, I got tricks my sleeve. I got nets, I got rays; I got all kinds of toys. And if I can't get the bad guy, then I can sure light 'em up for someone who can. I know what I'm good for," Zack said cheerfully. Well, as cheerful as you can be when facing possible death.

Zack might occasionally be a bit cowardly, and he wasn't the greatest academic in the world, but that was more than madeup for by his attitude. Zack was never really depressed; occasionally down, but never in the kinds of deep blue funks that I had gotten myself into. He was upbeat, funny, incredibly laid-back, and helped keep the rest of us sane more often than we could say. If he could handle this situation… well then any of us could.

Speed, Penny, and Lash looked back at Zack, then at me, and they looked ashamed. That might have been the first time, ever, I had seen genuine shame on their faces, and I was surprised.

"I never thought…" Penny started, then stopped, uncertain.

"Then start thinking _now_ ," I said forcefully.

"We just never really _wanted_ to go out and save people we didn't know," Speed said.

"I guess that'd make me kinda pissed off if I didn't want to save the world," Zack said idly. "I always thought it'd be cool though. I mean the costumes, the newspaper stories, the babes who dig guys in Spandex…" I suppressed a laugh at that, it was a good thing he'd never used that "babes" line in front of Layla though, or he'd find his celery sticks chasing him around the house.

What Speed had said made a ridiculous amount of sense though. All the kids that went to Sky High were going to end up devoting their lives to saving strangers from harm. Most of us grew up with superhero parents, and dreamed of becoming heroes ourselves. But what if you didn't want to be a hero? What if you just wanted to be, say, a doctor or a firefighter or something? I had no idea if there were any people that had ever graduated from Sky High that _hadn't_ gone into the hero business. _It sounds like no one ever asked those three if they wanted to save the world. I guess that would make anyone angry._ And when Royal Pain had come along and asked them to tear down the institution that represented everything they hated in the world… It must have been irresistible.

"So… what _do_ you want to do?" I asked. Lash shrugged.

"I'd like to play bass in a band or something."

"I like to make videos, thought I'd like to work for MTV," Speed put in.

"I want to be a model," Penny added.

"And why didn't you say something about this like say… four _years_ ago?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, like my dad would listen," Lash said sullenly. Speed and Penny body nodded in agreement. _Ok, well that doesn't excuse their behavior, but that sure explains lot…_

"You seriously need to talk to Principle Powers about this-" A crackle on the com set interrupted me.

"There's a car coming down the road." It was Will's voice, a faint hissing of wind in the background from his flying.

"See anything yet Magenta? Ethan?" Ethan and Magenta had the binoculars, and I could see them fixing them on the car.

"Yeah… looks like… I think four, no five people," Magenta said after a minute.

"There's a girl in the driver's seat… I don't think it's Kristina. Penny, you said she had short blonde hair, right?" Ethan asked.

"That's right, pale skin, short blonde hair, blue eyes. She was wearing white the last time I saw her," Penny called back.

"Ok, not her then. This one looks kind of Indian, long dark hair, dark skin… I don't recognize her at all. She doesn't look like anyone in my books," Ethan reported.

"Well they told us she was trying to recruit people that didn't even have superhero parents, remember? She might be new," Will said.

"Yeah… ok, three men, two women… the second woman is Kristina I think," Ethan reported, and I heard Penny curse behind me.

"Hey guys… there's a bird up here. An eagle," Will said, sounding uncertain.

I actually _saw_ Magenta freeze on the screen.

"Will, eagles don't fly at night; that's a shapeshifter!" she cried.

"It's not- holy cow!" I heard Will exclaim. He was out of the range of the cameras, so I couldn't see what was happening to him, and it was maddening. "It just dived at me! Hey!" Then something odd happened; I heard Will's voice drop a half-octave, and it took on a tone of black rage. "You _fucking_ bird, come back here!"

I saw Ethan, Magenta, and Layla looking up at the sky, and all three were looking alarmed.

"Layla. Layla!" I yelled to her, trying to get her attention back to the here and now.

"Ye-yeah?" she responded, and I could hear the fear in her voice.

"Does Will swear? Ever?" I asked urgently. _I_ hadn't heard him swear in our one year of friendship, but Layla had known him since they were children.

"No, not ever," she whispered, her eyes fixed on the sky.

"Rage inducement!" Ethan said suddenly. "There's a supervillain called the Berserker, he can make people angry. I bet that's what happened to Will."

I swore mentally. Just like Boomer had predicted, they had found a way to get Will out of the fight. And that meant now I was in charge. Crap.

"Layla, stop that car!" I called out; glancing back to the lower screen to see it was halfway up the driveway already. Layla wrenched her attention off the sky and stretched out her hand to the ground below. The ground buckled a bit, and then erupted in roots and vines, lashing around the car and wrapping it up. The driver tried to swerve, but Layla was having none of it, and soon had it trussed up like a present for Christmas.

"Yeah Layla!" Zack yelled, clapping in the echoing gymnasium.

I watched the car closely, and I saw Ethan and Magenta both start with surprise.

"No joy, something's happening…" Magenta started to say.

There was a faint flash of bluish light, and then there were five people sitting in the middle of the road about ten feet from the car. All five were holding hands, and from Penny's faint curse behind me, the short, buzz-cut blonde in the white t-shirt and jeans must have been the infamous Kristina.

"Damnit, that's Viper!" I heard Lash say behind me, and stretched his arm to point out a slender, dark-haired kid in green. Aside from the dark-haired girl Ethan had pointed out earlier, there was a massive guy with a mess of bushy brown hair, and a tall, thin guy with thick streaks of white in his hair.

The five of them scattered in all directions as soon as they had appeared on the road, and Layla frantically tried to send her vines to catch them all. She managed to catch the big guy, only to see him shift into a bear, ripping through the vines like they were tissue paper. Kristina seemed to be dodging them adroitly, teleporting every few feet, hauling along the dark-haired girl with her. Layla couldn't get the vines to follow her fast enough. Viper kept getting tripped up, but then he would get his hands on the vines, and I would see them start to wither and fall away. She got vines securely around the white-haired guy, and for a minute it looked like we had our first victory. Then he got one hand somewhat free, and stretched it to the sky. A massive lightning bolt flashed down from the heavens and struck him, incinerating the vines on the spot, leaving him untouched.

"Holy shit!" Speed yelled behind me. _Took the words right out of my mouth Speed,_ I thought.

"Ethan, Magenta, get ready to tag the first two you can," I called, feeling the heat gathering along my arms involuntarily. "Get Kristina!" Her short-range teleportation power was potentially deadly to our plan, because if she could get past the fire-ring… we could all be in big trouble. This was going to take some really good timing…

I watched our two shapeshifters edge a little closer to the edge of the roof, and saw Magenta hand Ethan a stun-cap.

"Layla, bury Lightning-boy, if he gets a shot off at Will-" I didn't even get a chance to finish my sentence.

"I'm on it!" she cried, and every plant in the electrokinetic's vicinity went mad. Vines, bushes, even entire trees started lashing out at him, and lightning began to fall thick and fast around him. But as fast as he could burn the plants, Layla was bringing more in.

Almost at the same time, Ethan and Magenta shapechanged and leapt off the roof. Kristina and the other girl were nearly to the door, their progress unpredictable by Kristina's random short teleports. I watched, heart in my throat, as they angled for her next most likely position… and missed, as Kristina teleported to the left. The guinea pig and blob hit the ground lightly, and then quickly ran (and oozed) for the cover of Layla's foliage. Their attacks needed the element of surprise, so they needed to regroup before going after them again. The dark-haired girl seemingly ignored them as she took out a set of keys from her pocket.

 _Oh damn!_ I thought. We had done the obvious and locked all the exterior doors, but apparently they had a key to the place. In two seconds she had the door open, and the two were now in the school. They'd be here any second.

"Ethan, Magenta, there're in! Get Viper and the bear!" I yelled, and ignited the firewall. The less people we had in the gym, the better. We didn't need Kristina calling in the cavalry.

I had barely powered up when I heard Penny make a scared-sounding squeak. I looked down to the gym doors to see Kristina and her shadow standing there. They slowly began to walk forward, Kristina teleporting them every few feet, giving the whole thing the surreal air of a horror movie.

"Zack!" I cried, and flung my arm up in front of my face. White light erupted around me, and I heard an unfamiliar voice cursing loudly. _Score one for the good guys,_ I thought, and took my arm down. Zack had powered up and was flooding the gym with bright yellow-green light, clearly illuminating the stumbling figures of our two enemies. _Gotcha._

"Cutter, Cutter where are you?" the dark-haired girl asked. "I can't _see!_ "

"Here, _here!_ Focus on me, follow the _sounds,_ Painbreaker!" Kristina called back. _Codename is Cutter? That can't be good…_ I was about to get Lash to knock those two down, when Cutter turned and threw something. I couldn't even see it clearly, just a flash of something silver going past my head and into the wall behind me. I turned, and saw it was a small knife.

"Ow," Zack said softly, and I saw he had a very small cut on his cheek from the blade. _Blinded and she still managed to hit him? Impressive_.

Then Painbreaker stretched out her hand towards us, and a dark flash honed in on Zack. He fell to the floor, clutching his face and screaming in mortal agony.

" _Bastards!_ " I snarled. "Lash!"

Lash's long, striped arm zipped out through a small chink in the firewall and tripped Cutter and Painbreaker, abruptly bringing an end to Zack's screams and our light source.

"Zack! _Zack!_ " I yelled.

"I think he passed out," Penny said, kneeling next to him. I was far too angry to even try to heal whatever had been done to him, so I had to leave him for now. And that made me even angrier. Absently I noticed Speed feeding the flames, and I tried to make them even higher, to block any line of sight Cutter and Painbreaker had on us. I wrenched my gaze back to the screen.

The bear had gotten himself loose from the rest of Layla's entangling vines and was lumbering towards the door, while Viper was right on his heels. I couldn't see Ethan and Magenta at all, but I hoped that was just because they were well hidden. The bear galumphed past another bush, and I saw a little dark furry bullet ram into his side. I cut off a protest as the bear stiffened and fell. Magenta shifted back and scrambled out of the way, grinning and panting at the same time.

"I think he's coming around…" I heard Penny say behind me, and the light level in the room began to rise. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Zack, your girlfriend just stunned the bear," I said to him, keeping my eyes on the screen.

"Dude… I knew she could," he said faintly.

On screen I saw Magenta back up from the bear and begin to turn… that's when Viper struck. Viper managed to get a hand on Magenta's arm, smiling cruelly when she stiffened in pain. Magenta turned dead pale and collapsed, shifting reflexively into her guinea pig form.

"Magenta!" Zack screamed, and the gym erupted in light. It was as if a second light-bomb had gone off, and I couldn't even cover my face in time. Renewed cries from Cutter and Painbreaker told us that our enemies had been caught off guard too. _"You'd be surprised at what super-kids can pull off under stress,"_ I heard the voice of Nurse Spex in my mind. _No crap_ , my brain replied. _I can't see, they can't see, the only one who can see is Zack… where the hell was Ethan? He should have been taking care of Viper… we have to get Magenta back to me…_ My brain was running at light speed in a hundred directions at once, but I could only come to one decision.

"Zack, get Magenta and bring her back," I said in a low voice, hoping Zack would only hear me over the com. There was a rush of air by my head, and I realized Zack had just hurdled me on his way over the firewall. _Fuck, that was stupid. I should have sent Speed. No, I can't have him leave the circle… Zack will know right where Magenta is… Cutter and Painbreaker can't see, they can't tag Zack, not with that glare… Damnit, I never wanted to make these kinds of decisions… Where the_ hell _is Ethan?_

"Ethan! Ethan answer me!" I yelled into the com. "Layla, what's going on out there? Where's Viper?" I was still half-blinded, and I couldn't see the screen for shit. I heard a faint sob come over the com channel, and my heart sank.

"It's… I have Lightning-boy all wrapped up, I don't think he can move… Warren I'm _tired_ , I can't, I can't…." she said, sobbing. _Oh fuck, she just ran herself into power exhaustion._ _Damnit, we_ need _her._ Layla's powers were a lynchpin of this plan of ours, but her overreaction to Lightning-boy must have burned up all her energy. _Will, we need Will._

"Layla, try to talk Will down, get him out of that rage, say whatever you have to," I said forcefully. I wasn't even sure it was possible to talk someone out of an induced rage, but it was worth a shot. I heard Layla begin talking; nearly babbling into the com, but my attention was focused elsewhere. My vision was finally starting to clear, and without Zack's bright glow in the gym, all we had were the gym lights themselves. I spied Cutter's pale silhouette far too close to me, and Painbreaker's dark, shadowy form on the far side of the gym.

"You can't win. With Bloodtalon up there with Flyboy, he'll be chasing her from now until next year and never even notice. Stunning Bruin won't slow him down for long; he's too damn big. And once he's free, he'll free Skybolt and then Flyboy will be nothing but a roasted chicken," she said cruelly, taking a step or two closer to me. I blinked furiously to try to clear my vision faster, feeding the flames as high as I dared.

Cutter blinked out in a flash of bluish light, and for a terrified second I though she was going to breech the firewall. Then she was back in front of me, screaming with outrage, smoke rising from her hair and clothes. _She needs line of sight, she can't cross the firewall!_ It looked like she had just found that out the very hard way.

"Bastard! Give them to me!" she snarled, drawing a knife in each hand. I couldn't even see where she was getting them, and the idea that she was teleporting them to her hands made me very uneasy.

"Come and get them yourself," I taunted loudly, and then murmured into the com, "Penny, Lash, get ready to set her on her ass." _Let her talk, if it keeps her from throwing more knives. If she's talking, then she can't do anything else._ Villains always talked too much, it was some kind of unwritten law of the universe…

"Why protect them? You know what they wanted to do to you? They wanted to steal your life. Royal Pain would have raised you as another Baron Battle, as a psychotic flame-throwing monster under her own control. They aren't _worth_ saving," she said, taking one more step so she was practically in my space. She might have been considered pretty, but there were lines of cruelty in her face that made her look like a demon in the firelight.

I could practically _hear_ Speed, Lash, and Penny wincing behind me at her words. Anger surged through me, not at what she said, but at her own attempts to bring me down to her level. Was loyalty supposed to be so cheap?

I wasn't sure what she was going to do next, but I couldn't have anticipated it. She suddenly leaned in and kissed me… while stabbing both knives in my stomach at the same time. I was shocked for about a half-second, then revulsion and anger roared through me. The Kevlar vest turned the blades, and I unthinkingly reached down and grabbed her wrists… with both my flaming hands. There was a sizzling sound, and then she screamed shrilly, like Zack had when Painbreaker had tagged him. I let go, shocked at what I had done, and Cutter clutched her burned wrists to her chest. My gorge rose when I saw the blacked skin on her arms, and I couldn't even formulate a thought as she staggered backwards, and then began teleporting out of the gym with Painbreaker.

_I cannot believe I just did that…_

"Warren!" Ethan's voice rang out over the com, "I couldn't get Viper, and the bear is up again!"

"Damn!" Everything was falling apart. "Ethan, Cutter and Painbreaker are coming out, we have to get Magenta inside! Zack's coming out to you."

I heard some faint cursing coming from the com set, and the scream of an eagle echoed through the yelling. I could see faint forms on the screen now, but only one of them was lit up like a Christmas tree.

" _Get off of her!"_ I heard Zack yell over the com, and the glow brightened on the screen a bit.

"Wow," Ethan said softly.

"I can't _see_ Ethan, what's going on?" I yelled, about on the edge of hysteria.

"Viper was standing over Magenta, and Zack just decked him!" Ethan reported breathlessly.

" _Where are you?"_ I snarled.

"I'm hidden, the bear woke up and started freeing Lightning-boy, and I had to get out of the way. I'm working my way over to them now… I think I can get one or the other, but I don't know if I can get both…" he said quietly.

"Use the stun-rays, Cutter and Painbreaker will be out there any minute," I said, trying to scrub my eyes with a forearm. The screen finally snapped into focus, and the scene was chaos. Zack was running back towards the front door, something small and dark cradled in his hands, the lumbering Bruin was bulling his way through the mound of leaves that marked Skybolt, and a prone Viper was sprawled in some shredded foliage. Layla was still on the roof, but her eyes were focused above her.

"Will!" Layla yelled suddenly, and I saw a red, white, and blue streak go sailing past her, followed immediately by a mad-looking eagle with red talons. _Bloodtalon_ , I remembered from Cutter's speech. _Where are Cutter and Painbreaker? Damnit, Zack is going to run right into them!_

Will flattened out his dive and went straight for Skybolt's mound of leaves, as lightning flashed down right in front of him. He pulled up so abruptly he must have gotten whiplash, and Bloodtalon ran right into him from behind. The eagle fell from the sky, and Bruin ran to intercept her, catching Bloodtalon on his broad, furry back. More lightning crashed around Will, and I had to look away from the screen. There was enough light just from the high windows to catch most of the show.

There was a strangled noise from the com, and a bright yellow-green light began to fill the gym. Cutter and Painbreaker re-entered the gym, Cutter with a knife at Zack's throat, Painbreaker holding Magenta's limp shifted form.

"Say a word, and I slice his throat and the rat dies in agony," Cutter said with deadly quiet menace. "Now, drop the fire and let those three decide how they're going to die."

I froze, fear flooding my body and my flames dying on my hands. Seeing Cutter's burned wrists, the desperation in Zack's eyes, Magenta lying so still in Painbreaker's grasp, seeing the lightning show outside… _I'm going to fail them; I'm going to die._ It wasn't just a guess, it was a fact. I _knew_ I was going to die horribly, and all my friends were going to die with me…

"Fuck this," I heard Lash say behind me, and before I could even be surprised, all three had hopped the firewall. Penny, all eight of her, surrounded Cutter in a show of cartwheels and kicking, striking her in a half-dozen places at once. Zack stumbled forward, out of Penny's circle, and Lash and Speed went into action on Painbreaker. Lash plucked Magenta's limb body from her grasp, and Speed went into a vortex on her. Within a few seconds she was gasping for air.

The icy fear broke when Lash dropped Magenta in my hands. The ember flames sprang to my hands without even conscious thought, the feeling of _wrongness_ in Magenta was so strong. I could see her life's fire in my minds eye, shadowed as if by tar by Viper's poison. I slowed my breathing and began to pour the red fire into her tiny body, the world narrowing to the flame I was trying to save within her. Faint noises penetrated my concentration, a cry, a thud, a curse, and a louder crash… I ignored them all, not able to care about them even if I wanted too. I began to feel cold… then there was a faint touch on my shoulder and Zack joined his power to mine.

"Come on Warren, you can do it. Hang on Magenta, I love you…" I heard faintly above the roaring in my ears. Finally the feeling of wrongness stopped, and I dropped to my knees. My eyelids seemed to weigh a hundred pounds each as I struggled to open them again. A dusty and battered Will was kneeling next to me, Layla standing next to him.

"Hey Warren? I think we won…" he said, sounding surprised.


	11. Debriefing

It must have taken us almost an hour to pull ourselves together. Will told me that Ethan had managed to stun Bruin and Bloodtalon while _he_ managed to get through to Skybolt. Just as that was happening, they heard what was going on inside the gym and ran to _our_ rescue. Bad luck and worse timing let Cutter have one free moment, long enough to grab Painbreaker and teleport out, along with the rest of her crew.

"So we lost them," I concluded, hanging my head.

"But Penny, Lash, and Speed are fine. And you and Zack saved Magenta. Layla saved _me._ No one died; we're all in one piece," Will said reassuringly.

"What happened with Bloodtalon?" Ethan asked. He looked a little worse for the wear, pale and exhausted.

"I don't even know really. She dived me, and just barely touched me… and I got so angry with her. All I could think about was trying to k- get her," Will said hesitantly.

"That sounds like rage inducement," Ethan nodded authoritatively. Will was obviously feeling terrible about it, and I had a real moment of empathy with him. He hadn't known that he could feel capable of ripping someone else apart. I really needed to get him to see my mom, or he was going to end up worse off than I was after the cafeteria fight.

"Layla talked me out of it," Will said quietly, "Otherwise I think I'd still be up there."

"And you stunned _two_ people on your own? So much for you not being much of a shot," Layla said with a smile at Ethan, carefully changing the subject. Will was uncomfortable enough as it was. Ethan shrugged and blushed.

"I was close. And Bruin was a big target," he waved it off. "And besides, Zack was the one that punched Viper out all on his own. I saw him; it was something else."

"My hero," Magenta said, smiling a little. At least, I think she was smiling, because she was shifted, sitting on Zack's shoulder.

"Yeah, but guinea pig versus bear and the bear goes _down!_ " Zack said, slamming one fist into his palm, then reaching up to scratch Magenta on the head.

"Should we be watching this?" I asked, exaggeratingly averting my eyes from them both.

"Lighten up Warren," Magenta said, shifting back and rolling her eyes.

"I still can't believe they got away," Will said dejectedly. "I mean, we were right there…"

"Cutter was fast. And desperate," I pointed out.

"Principal Powers is going to kill us," Speed said. "I bet she'll have us scrubbing toilets. We managed to screw this up so badly…"

"Uh… how, dudes? I think the numero uno thing was to keep you alive. And you are. Unless you're not. Which I don't think you are. Dead that is-"

"Zack, shut up. You're babbling," Magenta said gently, putting a hand over his mouth. Zack shut up and then curled up at Magenta's feet, closing his eyes.

"We didn't capture anyone!" Speed pointed out. He looked pretty pissed, and I was surprised by his reaction. _What, is this some kind of latent sense of responsibility that just awoke? Nah, he's probably just annoyed he didn't get to kick Viper's ass._

"So what? We have the stuff from the cameras. That's almost as good as having one of them. Maybe we can't question them, but now we know their tactics, and that'll tell us how they're taught! And we have their car too, maybe that'll give us some clues!" Ethan said, perking up a bit.

"How about we do that in the morning? I think I need to sleep for a week," I protested.

"They're sending the bus for us… We better go meet it; the road is still pretty torn up," Layla said, getting to her feet. Will had called Principal Powers as soon as we were in the clear. Once we were certain that Cutter and her crew weren't going to come back, Powers had said she was going to send a bus to the detention center for us, and bring us back to Sky High to be checked out by Nurse Spex. Of course, since there was no further threat, and they had apparently had to deal with two other attacks tonight, the bus was slow in getting there.

Someone else was going to deal with the unholy mess we had made of the detention center, but we took all our gear with us anyway. Humping it out over the broken ground and foliage wasn't terribly fun, and even Will was dragging his feet, so to speak. There was only so much even a super-strong guy could carry before it started spilling out of his arms.

Ethan was carrying a lot of the communications gear and I ended up walking beside him to help steady a box full of camera mountings. He looked pretty tired-- we all were, but he was looking as bad as Speed, Lash, and Penny did that day we saw them in the principal's office. That same nervous jumpiness, the feeling that he was at the end of his rope. When we crawled over the place where Magenta had stunned Bruin, he actually turned a bit green. Small alarms were going off in my head at his reactions, but I didn't want to talk to him about it in front of the whole gang.

The bus was right there when we cleared the last of the rubble, and gratefully we all climbed on, gear clanking. Our bus driver was Will's buddy Ron Wilson, who had kept his job despite his new power of super-sizing himself, calling it his "cover identity." Then again, what cover identity would allow you the fun of driving a rocket-powered school bus on a regular basis? We were just glad to see a familiar face.

"Tough night?" he asked sympathetically, and Will nodded. He grimaced in sympathy, and politely kept quiet for the rest of the trip back to school. Zack and Magenta actually fell asleep on the way back, and Will and Layla could do little more than just stare blankly at the seat in front of them. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew Ethan was tapping me on the shoulder, telling me we had arrived. Principal Powers was waiting for us the minute we touched down, a troubled smile on her face.

"Well done, heroes," she said warmly as we departed, helping us with our bags of gear. We hadn't even bothered to change out of our armor, and we all squeaked and clicked as we trooped to the nurse's office. We were all too tired to say much, and submitted to Nurse Spex's questions and monitoring without a protest. Whatever Viper had done to Magenta was apparently all gone, but it had been hard on her body to have it healed in that short a period of time.

I was exhausted, as apparently using my new power in a crisis situation was a lot more draining on me than I had anticipated. Having Zack around to leech energy from had helped, but even he was getting tired, which for a guy that's a living battery is pretty impressive. Layla's power exhaustion actually had her seeing double, and she was absolutely starving. I think I saw her go through three salads without even coming up for air.

Ethan wasn't too bad off: more nauseated than anything, and Will's tiredness stemmed more from emotional drain than physical weakness. Speed, Penny, and Lash were fine: better off than the rest of us put together. Nurse Spex made us all spend the night anyway for observation, and any protests we might have had were put aside in favor of sleeping.

* * *

The next time I woke up, it was closer to noon than morning. The bright light from the unshaded windows woke me up, and I squirmed upright in bed to see where it was coming from. It took another minute of blinking at the window for my brain to catch on that I was in the infirmary rather than my own bedroom, and then I shook my head and reached for my clothes.

I was the first one up, and the rest of my friends were still fast asleep. I felt a little guilty watching them while they rested, but I figured they must need it. Will and Layla had beds right next to each other, and were holding hands between them. I had remembered worrying about Will and what Bloodtalon had done to him last night, but it seems that whatever Layla had told him to snap him out of his rage had done him a world of good. I'd keep my eye on him, but maybe he wouldn't need my mom's intervention. I felt kind of proprietary about those two, considering that I had basically led them to get together. _Good Lord, Warren Peace the matchmaker…_ There's _a scary thought._

For a second I thought Magenta was already up, because the bed next to Zack's was empty, until I realized he was holding something in his arms. Zack was cuddling a shifted Magenta like a teddy bear. _The cute, it burns! Man, I need to borrow Ethan's camera and get a picture of that. I don't know if I'd ever use it, because they'd probably kill me, but that would be great blackmail. For what, I don't know…_

Lash, Speed, and Penny were in the next room, and for a moment I thought Ethan was with them. Then I realized the last bed in the row was rumpled, but empty, and Ethan's shoes were under it. _Huh, where'd he go?_ _He was here a second ago…_ I paused and listened, then heard a faint noise from the bathroom. It sounded like someone being sick… I walked up to the door and tapped on it faintly. There was a long pause, a flush, and then the tap running. Finally Ethan opened the door and tried to slip out.

"Sorry I took so long, it's yours now," he whispered, and I caught him by the arm as he tried to squeeze past.

"What's going on? Are you ok?" I asked quietly.

"Uh… sure, yeah, I think," he said lamely. I sighed and pushed him back into the bathroom, closing the door behind us. There wasn't another place with any privacy around here unless we went back into the examination rooms, and then Nurse Spex would know we were up.

"Uh, Warren? I was just feeling a little sick, I had some nightmares," Ethan protested quietly, ducking his head a bit. I looked at him sternly. Ethan was a genius; if he had wanted to he could have skipped several grades, and he routinely did better than all of us in all of our classes. He was unfailingly polite and kind, and endlessly creative about finding solutions to any problem. But I didn't think he could find a solution to this one.

"Tell me about last night," I said casually, leaning against the door. That wouldn't stop him if he wanted to melt and slip out, but that would have been rude. And Ethan was never rude.

"What about it? We're going to go over all the tapes with Principal Powers today-." he started.

"About what happened with Viper," I corrected. Ethan paled again. His strategy with Magenta was fairly well developed after our Gauntlet runs, and it absolutely depended on them striking their enemies nearly at the same time. Magenta might be able to move a little faster than Ethan in her shifted form, but with the rough terrain last night, they would have been about the same. How had Ethan not been able to tag Viper the same time Magenta had gotten Bruin? She had been _depending_ on him to do it, that's why she relaxed her guard after she stunned the bear.

"I… I screwed up. It's my fault Magenta got hurt. It's my fault they all got away," he said miserably, hugging his arms to his chest and staring at the floor. He was nearly shaking with fear, and suddenly his actions made sense.

"Hell Ethan, you _froze._ You got scared when you saw Viper and Bruin. You know damn well what Viper could have done to you because you read the files on King Cobra, and you _froze,"_ I said, trying to sound understanding, not accusatory. No wonder he hadn't been able to tag Viper; Ethan had been huddled under the foliage frozen in fear.

"I'm not- a very good hero," he got out, sniffling, holding back sobs.

"I froze too," I told him, and he snapped his gaze to mine, looking incredulous. "Cutter and Painbreaker had captured Zack and Magenta and marched them into the gym. Cutter told me to drop the firewall or she'd cut Zack's throat. All I could see going on outside was Will being hemmed in by Skybolt, Layla too exhausted to help, and I had no idea where you were. I honestly thought I was going to die, and I froze and let my flames die out. If Speed, Lash, and Penny hadn't acted… I think we'd all be dead.

"And _you_ stunned Bruin and Bloodtalon, even after you had just seen Magenta fall. _You_ kept them from coming to Cutter and Painbreaker's aid. You actually helped. I might have crippled Cutter with what I did to her," I explained, and then told him what I hadn't told Will or the others, that I had actually laid my burning hands on Cutter. I knew they would see it eventually, but Ethan would understand how much that would revolt me. He knew what Baron Battle had done to get himself into the Metroplex Detention Center.

Ethan was quiet for a minute, and then took a few deep breaths.

"I don't know how to tell Magenta how sorry I am," he said finally.

"Just say that," I urged. "Look, no one in that fight _didn't_ screw up at some point. I know all of us are going to be beating ourselves up for days. Magenta should have been watching her own back, Will shouldn't have let Bloodtalon touch him, Layla should have paid closer attention to her own powers, Zack should have been listening that Cutter and Painbreaker were coming out of the gym… And you know what? We survived. It was our first real fight, and no one died or got seriously hurt. We'll learn from it and move on."

"We can always learn something from everything," Ethan whispered.

"Isn't that like your personal motto or something?" I asked, giving him a small smile. Ethan gave me a ghost of a grin back.

"Yeah, that sounds good," he said. "Warren… thanks. Umm… I'm going to go back to bed until the nurse comes to wake us up. I didn't sleep very well last night."

I let him out the door and let out a huge sigh of relief. _One down, four more to go. Ok Peacemaker's son, let's make sure the rest of your team doesn't go off the deep end like he was about to. Right…_ This hero stuff was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

* * *

"We have all the footage, and we managed to put together a profile of those that attacked you. I figured you would want to know all that you could, as I expect you've opened yourself up to your first professional rivalry," Principal Powers was saying later that afternoon.

Nurse Spex had finally booted us all out of bed around noon, giving us another round of tests before shooing us off to the cafeteria to eat. Speed, Penny, and Lash were already there, deep in conversation with someone I recognized as one of the guidance counselors. I wondered why he was there on a Saturday, and then ignored it in favor of food. Most of us were hungry enough to eat our trays without salt, and spent nearly an hour stuffing our faces. Not even sessions in the Gauntlet had taken this much out of us. Then again, Gauntlet sessions lack the possibility of real, painful nasty death. Adrenaline does funny things to you. Principal Powers had called us into her office as soon as we were done, gesturing to follow her explanations on the screen.

"Cutter: you were right Ethan, she _is_ the daughter of the Vanisher. The reason we didn't have a lot of files on him is because he's a thief and a kind of getaway driver, or getaway teleporter, rather than the kind of supervillian that gets into direct battle with us. The Vanisher's cover is that he's a magician in a traveling circus. We don't know his daughter's real name, but Kristina Cutter has been her stage name since she was five. She _also_ works in the circus, as a trick knife thrower. She wasn't teleporting those knives to her hands; she's just an exceptionally fast draw. Also, one of her tricks is that she's learned how to throw blindfolded."

Principal Powers showed us some very slowed-down footage of Cutter as she drew her knives, and we could finally see she was drawing them from concealed sheaths on her belt. That was bad enough, but when Powers explained about her being able to throw blindfolded… We all groaned.

"No wonder she tagged Zack," I said, shaking my head.

"You were right about Viper too; he's King Cobra's son. He's been in and out of trouble for quite a while. He just seems to be exceptionally good at having those that cross him come down with a terrible case of near-death before they can put him away permanently. He constantly moves around the country, but has kept dropping out of sight for anywhere from a few days to a few months at a time.

"Bloodtalon is the daughter of the Berserker and Condor-woman. There were rumors about her for several years… but no one really believed them because a rage-inducing shapeshifter is-"

"Really weird?" Magenta interrupted.

"Well yes. A highly unusual combination to say the least. The Berserker patterns himself after the Vikings, complete with using a big axe, and he can induce rage in himself as well as his enemies. I don't know if Bloodtalon can do that, but at the very least we know she only seems to be able to work by touch. The Berserker can use his powers from a range and affect several people at a time."

"Thank God for small favors," I muttered. If she had gotten to _me…_ I had gone off the deep end of rage more than once _without_ external prompting, and might have gone completely off my rocker if she had managed to tag me. Anger fed my powers, and I could have crisped my charges and Zack as well if she had gotten me in a killing rage.

"Skybolt looks to be the son of Stormwitch. He has a very specialized form of weather control combined with electricity immunity. There aren't very many records of him either, specifically, though we have some reports that he's been helping his mother with her attacks for a few years.

"Now, it seems either Royal Pain's academy is either teaching older students or sending out their teachers, because both Bruin and Painbreaker seem to be in their late twenties," she said, and gave us close-up pictures from the cameras. Now that we weren't running around for our lives, it was much easier to judge ages. Painbreaker and Bruin were both definitely older than the other four, who were only around my age.

"We don't have any records at all on Painbreaker, but judging from the tapes and Mr. Cramer's descriptions of her power, she has pain-enhancement powers. That's fairly rare actually; the last recorded supervillain to have them was the Grim Reaper, and he was defeated almost forty years ago. She might be kin to him, but all records of him cease after his defeat, unfortunately.

"Bruin is also an anomaly, a clear-cut case of shapeshifting powers, but he fits no known shapeshifter families or prior incidents of shapeshifter attacks. It may be that he and Painbreaker are from entirely new super-families, and Royal Pain's academy managed to recruit them before we found them," Principal Powers explained.

"That's… great. Do we know when they're going to attack again? Are Speed, Lash, and Penny still in danger?" Will asked. Principal Powers shook her head.

"No we don't think so. From the tapes, we believe they're going to be some time in recovering from this fight. They weren't expecting this kind of resistance, and it showed. They came in expecting it to be six against three and got a nasty surprise to find themselves outnumbered," she explained.

"So… now what happens?" Magenta asked.

"Speed, Lash, and Penny will be staying at Sky High for now, until we can properly secure the detention hall again. As for you six… I'll give you a choice. You've gone above and beyond what I could have hoped for; you've taken on a difficult task without complaint or hope of reward. We've driven you very hard these last few weeks… how would you like a vacation?"

"Seriously?" Zack asked, perking up.

"Seriously. A nice camping trip far away from Maxville, on your own," she said, smiling.

"What about our schoolwork?" Ethan asked anxiously. Zack punched him in the shoulder to try to get him to shut up.

"We'll send some assignments with you so you won't be behind when you come back," Powers said with a nod, and Zack and Magenta rolled their eyes simultaneously.

"Oh wait…." I said, laughing as a thought struck me. "You're going to have to tell our parents what we were _really_ doing last night."

"Yes," Powers said with a sigh. "And I'd like you all to be out of the crossfire until they calm down. Even superhero parents can get overly protective of their kids, no matter how strong or tough they are. You'll probably be able to hear the arguments all the way over in Yellowstone."

"Yellowstone? That's great! I've always wanted to go there!" Layla said enthusiastically.

"So… you want us to leave a message at home or anything? My mom would fly all the way over there to haul me back home and ground me for life if I left after something like this and didn't say anything," Will pointed out. Principal Powers laughed.

"We'll have you make video messages for your parents, and you can call them after five o'clock tomorrow. After that I'll have had a chance to talk to them and perhaps they'll be in a more receptive mood."

"So… is this also to get us out of the way of a retaliatory strike from some of Royal Pain's _other_ students?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at Powers. She was still trying to protect us from the harsh realities of the superhero business, and I didn't want the others to be unprepared. I could tell I had struck a nerve again, as Principal Powers' smile faded.

"You ask very uncomfortable questions Mr. Peace," she said, scowling. "But yes, that's the other reason."

"Just so we're all clear on this," I added with a smirk.

"Yes Mr. Peace, I know. I'm trying to protect both you and all your families. I also think you've also been working far too hard these last few months and I am _ordering_ you to take a vacation before you all have nervous breakdowns. Is that clear?" she demanded, looking at Will. Will's eyes were very wide with surprise, but he nodded quickly.

* * *

Within a few hours we found ourselves gearing up for a very different kind of mission, packing up tents instead of Kevlar vests, food instead of surveillance cameras, and hiking clothes instead of body armor. Within another hour, we were being flown down to Yellowstone, only a few hours away by a rocket-powered bus. Powers obviously had been planning this for a while, because a car was waiting for us to use on the outskirts of the park. I still didn't have my license, but Will and Layla did, so they drove us to one of the back entrances.

Ethan was pouring over some maps in the back seat, as we talked about hiking trails. Most of us had been camping at one point or another, though only Layla was really in love with it.

"Couldn't she have sent us to Miami Beach or something?" Zack had been complaining.

"Yeah, but think how many people are at Miami Beach. We're supposed to be anonymous here, remember?" Magenta had pointed out.

"Dropping us in the middle of the woods seems kinda harsh though. I just wanna lay around, not hike!" Zack protested, fairly reasonably.

"So we'll find a good place, out of the way, hike there and then _stay_ there," Ethan suggested. "Best of both worlds."

"Yeah yeah… let's just hope we don't get eaten by a bear or something…" Zack muttered.

"Not funny," Magenta warned, and Zack winced and apologized in almost the same instant.

Will was driving, allowing Layla the freedom to look around and commune with nature as we went. In a couple of hours we finally reached the entrance we were looking for, and Will stopped the car so we could get our safety talk from the ranger. I was half-dozing in the sun in the backseat, but came alert again after Ethan poked me in the ribs.

"Wha-?" I asked intelligently. Ethan was subtly pointing at the park ranger walking towards our car, a big guy with a bushy beard and messy brown hair poking out from under his hat.

"Guys, that's Bruin!"


	12. Interlude:  Cutter's Crew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different, my dear readers. A songfic of Linkin Park's "Numb" focusing on how Cutter's Crew was gathered together, along with a few brief training vignettes from Royal Pain's villains' academy, along with a mirror of the battle in the previous chapter from the point of view of Cutter's Crew. I know that battle was somewhat confusing, particularly near the end, because I was constrained to a single viewpoint in a fifteen-person combat, and my narrator was blind for half of it. Hopefully this will clarify the Homecoming fight somewhat. If you couldn't care less about Cutter's Crew, or hate songfic with a passion, then I pray your indulgence and direct you to the next chapter where our regular story continues.

 

_I'm tired of being what you want me to be…_

"Dad, I'm tired of doing this!" Kristina Cutter folded her arms rebelliously, ignoring the skimpy sequined costume on the rack behind her.

"It's almost showtime Crissy, can't we talk about this later?" her dad asked tiredly. They had this argument at least once a day, sometimes more if there was more than one show.

"No we can't because it always ends up the same way. I'm sick of wearing these stupid costumes, sick of this whole damn life! You _never_ let me in on any of the missions, never even let me use my powers in the show-"

"Be quiet! You want the whole circus to hear you? We're in hiding for a reason Crissy, because-"

"Because you botched your last job and had to lay low! You keep saying you want me to be better, but you never let me!" she yelled.

"Crissy…" her dad said coaxingly.

"No! I'm _not_ doing it this time," she snapped, and turned and walked out of the tent. Behind her, her father sighed and left the opposite way.

Cutter waited only until she was out of sight of the tents before starting to teleport. Maybe her dad refused to let her use her powers except when they were alone, but she had learned enough to get out of there fast, at least. The circus had been in town long enough for her to have her own hideaway out here, a small grove of trees cut off from the world. It was small, quiet, private, and the perfect place for her to practice throwing. If her dad wouldn't let her go with him when he got his jobs… well maybe she would just make her own way.

The Vanisher wasn't really powerful, as supervillains went anyway. Sure, line-of-sight teleportation was fairly nifty, if you knew how to use it right, but her dad had no guts. In fact, he was a coward. That was why he acted as a damn "escape car driver" for other villains that actually had the balls to pull off some _real_ capers. Cutter knew she would have been living the high life by now if her dad ever let her _do_ anything other than just smile and throw steel in his pathetic magic acts.

It was her knife throwing that brought the real attention anyway, and she knew it. The looks of awe she got weren't entirely due to her abbreviated costume. She had begged throwing lessons from the last trick knife thrower the circus had before he retired, and now did the throws in her father's little magic act. It was the one thing she did very well, and she practiced obsessively. Hitting the target blindfolded, or backwards, or while spinning was even getting too easy, and she wanted to try adding teleporting between throws to give herself a challenge. Predictably, her father found this too dangerous.

 _Dangerous for him, maybe. I can take care of myself._ What did it matter that she was only thirteen? She had the fighting skill, super powers, and twice the brains of most living supervillains. She could be living the easy life, taking what the world owed her, but couldn't because her father was a damn coward! Snarling to herself, she took out her knives, closed her eyes, and began throwing, smiling each time she heard the blade strike wood.

"Very impressive," a deep, metallic voice said behind her. Cutter whirled and stared at the cloaked and helmeted figure standing there, and unthinkingly two knives were in her hands.

"I understand you find the circus life a little too confining, Cutter. What if I were to offer you something better? Something all your own? Something different than being the daughter of a half-failed super villain?"

Perhaps she should be angry with this person for insulting her father… but she couldn't. The Vanisher was a failure; he was barely more than a joke. Cutter lowered her knives in interest.

"I'm listening…"

* * *

_Feeling so faithless Lost under the surface_

Monica Keller was in a battle royal with her own conscience, and this time she was winning.

_You know what you can do. You're killing them a little at a time, all to make yourself feel better._

_But after they feel the pain I give them, the rest of their pains are so small by comparison that they get better faster. I'm doing them a favor!_

_You just keep telling yourself that. You know you like to hear them scream._

_No! No I don't, it's just therapy…_

_For them or you? You're sick Monica, you're sicker than they are. You argue with yourself because no one else will do it. You're too weak to stop on your own, because everyone is terrified of you._

_I_ need _to do this. Once they break through their pain barrier they always get better._

_Or they die or go insane._

_It's not like that!_

"Ms. Keller? I understand you're the pain therapist?"

Monica looked up from her own internal argument, surprised to see the young woman standing in front of her desk.

"Yes, that's me.

"I have a proposition for you, maybe something that you've been looking for for a long time…"

* * *

_I don't know what you're expecting of me_

"What am I supposed to be doing?" Frieda Olaf snapped at her father.

"Learning. You have my powers, so you need to learn my skills. Now try again."

"I _don't_ have your powers, not exactly."

"But you will Frieda, and you must be ready."

 _He can't honestly expect me to do this well, can he? I'm more likely to break if I swing that axe. I'm like Mom, I have bird bones._ She had her father's red hair and fiery temper to match, but she had not inherited his build. The Berserker was a giant amongst men, massive and muscular as the Vikings of old. Frieda already matched him in height, but was skeletally thin and frail-looking.

It wasn't that she didn't _want_ to learn how to fight, but Frieda was barely competent with her father's chosen weapon, and was getting no better despite her practicing. And every time he forced the same lessons on her, she felt the walls around her closing in. It was her mother's blood, the curse of her twin powers. Her mother's ability to shapeshift into an eagle gave her a disinclination for the closed spaces in her own house. And her father's powers…

Her father had yet to invoke his berserker rage on her to get her to fight "properly," and Frieda knew it was only a matter of time before his own temper caught up with him at his daughter's lack of progress. He said he wanted her to have skills with weapons before he did any "real" sparring with her.

She didn't care to be around when he finally lost his temper; she'd seen him go through a solid wooden wall without even breaking a sweat when the rage was on him. And if _she_ dared to invoke the rage in him to relieve her own frustration… _He'd kill me. Damnit, if I dared I'd do it... I don't know how he handles it day-in, day-out. It's like fire in my chest sometimes. I_ want _to use it, and I'd even want to use his bloody axe, but there's no way in hell I can learn when I'm trapped in here with him!_

She left the only way she knew how, diving for the window and out, shifting on the way down, and soaring up on eagle's wings. The roar of outrage behind her showed she was really going to regret that little stunt later, but now the freedom of the skies called. If she had to spend another minute trying to master a weapon she couldn't lift with powers she wasn't allowed to use…

She soared and wheeled above the forests surrounding her father's lair, and only dived down when she spied something interesting. A young woman, a brunette, along with a man old enough to be her dad, were walking casually along one of the game trails in the woods. Frieda's sharp eyes could spy no weapons on them, and she landed in the tree above to watch them. To her surprise, the woman turned to watch her land… and gestured for her to come down.

"Frieda, I know you don't know me, but I know a little something about you. I have something perhaps you'd like to hear…"

* * *

_Put under the pressure Of walking in your shoes_

"Try again Lawrence. Calling the wind is just like calling the lightning, but with less force behind it. You can't just go around blasting indiscriminately; you know that. Now, once again…"

Lawrence O'Brien stood on the wind-swept mountaintop, his arms stretched to the sky, his whole body straining to make the breakthrough his mother promised him was just around the corner. He had been able to call lightning since he was ten, but his mother, the Stormwitch, was absolutely certain he'd get the rest of her weather control powers.

 _She was so damn certain it would happen, but it hasn't_ , he thought to himself. For three years he had tried and practiced, standing out here in all weathers, all but begging for the powers his mother swore he had. The Stormwitch had even dragged him along on her own trips, hoping that the stress of combat would force the breakthrough, but nothing had happened. Nothing helped, no wind answered his call, no rain fell at his command, no snow fled from his thoughts. Only the white-hot lightning had ever come at his bidding. Sure he had managed to toast a few meddling do-gooders, but his mother never approved.

Frustrated at yet another day spent in fruitless, pointless concentration and disappointment, Lawrence opened his thoughts to the power in the sky and called the lightning down. The mountain was crowned with a fantastic display of fiery fury, and for a few brief moments, a smile crossed his face. He turned to see his mother, and his heart sank into his shoes. She simply stood by, scowling at him until his display was done. Then she turned her back on him deliberately.

"You'll never amount to anything if you keep up these childish displays. Learn what I teach you or you'll never inherit my title," she said scornfully as she walked away.

The Stormwitch had made a very comfortable life for herself, built off the tributes (never bribes or ransom, that would have been crass) she received to protect those around her from terrible storms. She was dead-set on her son following in her footsteps, on taking over the family business, hence the endless testing and training no matter what Lawrence wanted.

He closed his eyes, fighting back tears, lingering on the mountaintop until he was certain she was gone. Then he felt eyes on him from behind, and whirled. A strange figure, armored and traced with intricate gold circuitry, stood before him, its hands out to its side.

"Perhaps you would rather be in a place where you would be the best at what you do well, rather than third rate in what you can never be…"

* * *

_Caught in the undertow / Just caught in the undertow_

Park Ranger Michael Lewis turned away from the mutilated carcass of the bear, a familiar anger filling him. Far too many times for his comfort trophy hunters had managed to get into the park and claim their "big prize of a lifetime." In this case it was the massive paws and teeth of a sub-adult grizzly, a young bear just barely a few years away from his mother.

_Why can't they leave them alone? Don't they know what can happen to them? Have they forgotten the last time already?_

Ranger Lewis kept heading deeper into the woods, following the hunter's trail. When it went cold, he took a deep breath and let the change come over him. He didn't know why he could do this, why he could take on the form of a grizzly bear, but in an obscure way he was grateful. He was a freak of nature, no one knew he could do this, but he couldn't have done his job without this strange power.

With his bear's nose he sniffed out the trail, the blood now clear on the wind, and began to gallop. The greedy bastard that had dared to shed blood on park land wouldn't be able to resist two such prizes, though he wouldn't realize until it was too late that the hunt was going the other way entirely.

This time the hunt was short, the hunter weak and terrified. Lewis took his time and made sure the body (and the gruesome trophies) would be found. Remorse came to him far too late, as usual, and his delayed conscience yammered at him that the deaths he created, while viscerally satisfying, only made more trouble for the bears. He'd agonize over it later… he always did.

"Ranger Lewis? I believe you and I had much to discuss." A slender young woman, dressed in an outrageous costume, stood before him in his path. She addressed his bear form by his real name, showing no fear whatsoever. Lewis froze in terror. He had kept his strange power and secret hunts to himself for years. How had she found out about them? And what price would she demand for her silence?

* * *

_Every step that I take is another mistake to you_

"What is your problem? This is the third time in three months I've had to bail you out!" Alan "Viper" Roberts stood in the exact center of his living room while his father, King Cobra, paced around him, yellow eyes staring and accusing. This got worse with every confrontation, and Viper wasn't sure how much more he could take.

"You always said no one could stand up to us. I was just trying to get that guy's head on straight-"

"By poisoning him? You have the foresight of a mayfly, the maturity of a spoiled kindergartener, and the impulse control of a spastic strobe light. You've caused me nothing but trouble since you powered up, Alan, and I'm sick of it!" Viper clenched his jaw as anger flashed through him. The thick, heavy poison in his veins surged with him, seeking an outlet, seeking to destroy. His father's powers of poison seemed to extend to his poisonous words as well; he always knew exactly what to say to hurt his son the worst. And the same damn powers protected him from his son's retribution.

There was nothing he could do; he had no money, no education, no life outside his father's patronage, and _that_ was wearing thin. He found himself locked in his room, grounded and forbidden to leave or even answer the phone. Caged, Viper switched on his computer, wanting to write hateful letters to all of his friends… if he had any friends… _damn it!_

Yet there was something waiting for him, a curious e-mail from someone he did not recognize…

* * *

I've Become so numb

Michael Lewis roared again and charged the other shapechanger. The guy was an ape, literally, a gorilla, nearly as massive as Lewis and far more agile. Rage burst within him when he felt fangs sink into his shoulder, and he put his head down, bull rushing the gorilla, his thick fur turning away the worst of the bite. Once he used to take down poachers, once he used to justify his actions, he remembered that. But now… _Survive the next fight, survive, because you know what happens to your sister, your job, your life if you fail._ Roaring, Lewis charged again.

How Royal Pain had found him, he was only now beginning to understand. Many of the people here were the children of supervillains. Real supervillains, the ones that people like the Commander fought on TV and saved cities from. Apparently the children of the heroes were taught in some kind of school, something Royal Pain was making an opposite of. A supervillain academy, filled first with the children of villains, rather than heroes. And then filled out with people like him. People who thought they were freaks, unique, born with powers that they didn't understand. And when they found they had them, they hid them instead of using them.

That put them under the radar of the Bureau of Superpowered Affairs, which only had so much manpower to investigate every strange occurrence. But Royal Pain apparently had limitless money, time, and patience, and scoured every record, every discrepancy within those records, searching for the signs of a concealed super-powered being. How many she had sifted through before she found the few genuine ones, he didn't know, but it had to be a lot. She had not taken no for an answer when she found him, having quickly found all his weaknesses and used them ruthlessly.

His baby sister was still in college, and it was Michael's job that helped pay for some of her tuition. His own job was one that he loved and did well. The twin clubs of exposure of his secret to his family and the loss of his job were more than sufficient to cow him. And now he found himself run harder than ever before, literally fighting for his life, in more ways than one, every day…

* * *

_I can't feel you there_

_Become so tired_

"Again Monica. You want your title, you have to earn it. Break them, break them with pain."

Monica did not sigh, only watched the two pitiful forms on the floor with a sad and distant feeling of pity. She liked using her powers… but the consequences of them… She learned to not be moved, to shut out the screams, to only feel the flow of power. She had to; there was nothing else. She was a shadow, to be taken along with whoever would give her power its purchase. It was the only way to keep going.

It hadn't been this way at the hospital; it didn't need to be. There her power could flow strongly and without interruption, because _everybody_ there was in pain. Here it was harder, and the longer she went without using it, the worse the backlash became. That was why she was the tester, the torturer. Students that failed tests of character, of skill, of will, they became subjects for Monica's own studies. Was it so bad she was so good at it?

* * *

_So much more aware_

Viper had never been so tired in his life, but when he shoved his hair out of his face and saw the time on the clock, he smiled. So maybe this academy didn't allow him much free time, maybe the rules were harsh, but the rewards… He was the winner in this little game, and the punishment for the loser got to be administered by the victor. The poison was singing in his veins as he strode across the floor, ready to merge and boil within the blood of the loser of this race.

His father had _never_ told him that his powers could be used like this, that his poison could be tailored to his victims, that he could _change_ the effects if he wanted to. Amazing what you could learn when motivated. Of course, avoiding bloody death was always a _very_ powerful motivator.

* * *

_I'm becoming this_

Cutter's last knife was a quarter-inch too high in the target, and she snarled at it as she snapped forward retrieve it. It was supposed to be perfect! She needed it to be, each and every time. Teleporting in between knife throws was harder than she thought, and throwing blind after each teleport even more so. But she wasn't the only knife-fighter here, or the only teleporter. Her worth was calculated in her ability to hit what she aimed at, and to avoid being hit in return.

Here she had learned to do so much more with her powers, teleporting many more people so much farther than her father ever could. The more she used her powers, the easier it was, and the stronger she became, and the more accurate she was forced to be. Perfection was easy to strive for, because she had a goal. In this place obedience was a necessary evil, but if Cutter were good enough, smart enough, perfect enough, soon she would be the one being obeyed for once…

* * *

_All I want to do Is be more like me_

Lawrence, now calling himself Skybolt, stood once again on a mountaintop. Now the lightning around him had free play, now it crashed down from the sky in a breathtaking and extravagant display of power, free for all to see. Why should he be subtle? He was wanted for this power, for his sky-scorching potential, for the distraction he offered his enemies. Maybe he was using too much, maybe he was becoming power-saturated, maybe his brain was getting rewired with all the power he called down upon himself… It didn't matter now. He would take it as it came.

His mother had warned him about this, that even as he affected the weather, the weather would affect him. And because he could only control lightning (he heard his mother in his mind, her tones disapproving), she warned he would literally burn himself out if he continued to use his powers without restriction. _Too late for that now… There is no room for weakness here…_

* * *

_And be less like you_

Frieda Olaf soared high amongst the clouds, eyes beginning to mist as the rage within her demanded an outlet. Had her father ever felt like this? His power never seemed to _need_ an outlet, but Frieda's did. Bloodtalon is what Cutter had named her, an apt name, too apt. She needed blood to be shed, for the chase and anger, the way some people needed oxygen. The stronger the rage, the better it worked. Her and Painbreaker were the same, needing their powers too much to sit still, forced to become the best lest they be left behind when there was a fight.

Cutter had given her the lead position, to find and eliminate any watchers, to give her the best chance to use her power. Frieda's beak gaped in an avian grin as she saw the young boy flying high above the earth. _New enemies- Cutter didn't mention anything about this!_ Yet he was there, unmistakably a guardian of the detention center below. He looked so innocent, so fresh and young. _Let's see how you fly when you're angry, child!_ She dove, struck, and euphoria filled her as the rage drained away. _Try and catch me, little one; I have such a merry chase to lead you on_ …

* * *

Inside the car the rest of Cutter's group rode in uncomfortable silence. Skybolt had tried to turn on the radio a few miles back and Painbreaker had objected. He had been nursing his throbbing hand in silence for the last fifteen minutes, and no one had dared say a word. Bruin was flatly scared of Painbreaker, even more so than he was of Cutter. She rarely talked unless Cutter asked her a direct question, and when you looked her in the face, she never met your eyes. She kind of looked _through_ you, as if deciding on the spot how much you could take. Bruin avoided her at all costs.

He knew that he wasn't playing with a full deck; how could he, with the life he had ended up with? Painbreaker would probably admit the same, if he could get her to actually venture an opinion. The other four were probably even worse off than them, but they wouldn't admit their own insanity even at gunpoint. Then again, that was how Cutter ended up as the leader of this mission, because she wouldn't admit any weakness to anyone. The academy awarded the confident, the creative, the intelligent, and the ruthless, and Cutter was all of that in spades.

"Bloodtalon just tagged someone, a flyer," Painbreaker said into the tense silence. That was her _other_ talent. In addition to being able to amplify pain, she could sense it very easily, even at a distance. Cutter cursed and peered out the window.

"Damn, who did they get to guard the prey?" she snarled. Bruin and Viper exchanged glances. Only three people were designated as "prey" for this mission, but if they were guarded as well, this could get messy very quickly.

"Botanopath!" Painbreaker exclaimed suddenly, and jerked the car to the side. The car rang with curses as everyone braced for impact, then went silent when they saw the reason for her erratic behavior. Vines were running all over the road, reaching for the car as if they had a mind of their own. Despite her erratic driving, the car slowed and stopped, vines covering every window.

"Link hands, I'll get us out of here. Scatter once we land and watch out for any more surprises. Painbreaker and I will make for the center. Delay any pursuit!" Cutter commanded, and turned to look out the window through one of the chinks in its vine covering. The rest grabbed hands immediately, Viper forcibly breathing carefully to keep his poison within his own skin when the others touched him. Obedience to the team leader in the field was part of the reason they were the hunters and not the prey in this exercise.

In a flash of blue light and a brief sensation of vertigo, they were sitting in the middle of the road. Everyone scattered even as the vines and bushes began to lash out in all directions. Cutter kept Painbreaker with her, teleporting through the wreckage before she could be caught. Bruin began pounding in the opposite direction when the vines caught him. Taking a deep breath, he let the change come over him, roaring when the vines around him shredded.

Viper let the poison surge to his skin, making the vines whither and die as they touched him. Skybolt wasn't so lucky; the vines started to bury him, but all he needed was a single glimpse of the sky, a single finger free to point… Lightning flashed downward and struck him, incinerating the vines and freeing him at the same time. Bruin jerked his eyes to the sky, seeing Bloodtalon up there, leading some flyer on a rage-induced chase. _Thank God. At least we don't have to worry about any more attacks from above…_ he thought.

This "easy kill" was turning into a huge fiasco. Not that they didn't anticipate resistance, but this much of it? Where had they gotten the guardians? How many were protecting the prey?

* * *

Cutter and Painbreaker made it to the detention center doors as the others freed themselves from the vines. Cutter whirled as two small _somethings_ fell somewhere off to her right. She strained to see what they were or where they went, snarling mentally as she saw more and more plants whipping in to bury Skybolt. _Damn, damn, damn!_ There was a rattle of keys as Painbreaker finally got the door open, and Cutter grabbed her wrist to teleport her inside.

The gym was likely where the prey was hiding, so the gym was the first place Cutter checked. The fire startled her at first when she saw it, and she squinted her eyes against the glare. There was the prey, within the ring of fire, along with another young boy, tall and dressed in silver, and the very pretty pyrokinetic standing within the flames themselves. _No one I'm supposed to know… wait… the pyro… Baron Battle's son!_ Cutter thought in triumph. _They tapped_ students _to guard the prey! Brilliant._

Brilliant was right, as Battle's son yelled out something and the world erupted in white light. _God DAMN it!_ Cutter thought, crouching and listening hard for the faint shuffle of feet. _I can still tag one of them, where are they, listen Cutter, listen…_

"Cutter, Cutter where are you? I can't _see!"_ Painbreaker cried. She had let go of her wrist when they entered the gym, and was several feet behind her now. No time to get her and point her, Cutter was just going to have to do this the hard way.

"Here, _here!_ Focus on me, follow the _sounds_ , Painbreaker!" Cutter yelled back, and finally locked onto a faint sound past the crackle of the flames. _Someone moving…_ She drew and threw in a single smooth motion, and heard it strike wood on the far side of the gym. _Damnit, not a solid shot…_

"Ow…" she heard faintly. Cutter smiled cruelly, Painbreaker would have heard that. She was tuned into the sound of someone in pain like it was her own personal radio station. The air shivered near her head as a burst of her power flew by, and agonized screams filled the gym. _Got you…_

" _Bastards!"_ someone yelled, close. _Battle's son, must be._ "Lash!" Then someone grabbed her ankle and pulled hard, knocking the wind out of her and hurting like hell. A second thump a half-second later came from Painbreaker's quarter, and some of the glare in her eyes began to fade.

"Zack. _Zack!"_ Battle's son yelled into the resounding silence. Someone murmured a response as Cutter picked herself up. _They are going to_ pay _for that!_

* * *

Outside Bruin shook himself free of the last of the vines and began galloping for the center doors. Something had fallen from the roof there, and he wanted to check out what it was. If they managed to sneak up behind Cutter or something… anything they could do to him would be small potatoes next to Cutter's wrath if he let her get backstabbed.

Bears were fast, faster than humans, particularly over rough ground, and though Viper started out next to him, he was soon left behind. Bruin's vision narrowed as he tried to sniff out the others that were there… they had to be there. Then there was a faint sting, and blackness.

Viper cursed creatively as he saw something small rocket out of a bush and slam into Bruin's side. He kept running, hoping to catch whoever it was… He almost tripped as he saw a guinea pig _(A guinea pig?)_ stumble away from Bruin, shifting back into the form of a dark-haired girl in body armor. And her back was to him.

Viper smiled cruelly and let the poison surge forth on his hands. He went to one side and brought down a hand on her arm, the poison soaking quickly through the material between her armor plates. She stiffened and fell, shifting, and Viper quickly turned to Bruin to get him back up. There had been two bright flashes of light from the detention center, but he ignored them for now. He _had_ to get Bruin up. He was their tank, and Skybolt had to be freed. If Viper tried to do it himself, he'd end up tagging Skybolt by accident.

It only took a moment or two for him to shake the bear awake, and he pointed over to Skybolt. "Get him free, we need him!" he yelled, and Bruin shook his shaggy head a couple of times, then took off. That done, Viper turned to the little guinea pig and got ready to deliver the finishing blow. He hadn't had time to tailor his poison, and the faint twitches showed she still lived… for now.

* * *

Cutter got back to her feet, hearing Battle's son saying something about how someone's girlfriend had stunned the bear. _Stunned Bruin? Not for long…_ Vague shapes were becoming visible again, and she saw the bright glow from the silver kid on the floor. Then he screamed a name, and the world went white again. Cutter and Painbreaker collapsed in pain, cursing and scrubbing at their eyes. There was a _whoosh_ of air near her, and the faint, fading sound of padding feet. The worst of the glow was gone… _He sent out Glowboy… good. Just Battle's son and the prey. We can still pull this off._

Cutter stalked closer, tracking Battle's son by the heat and faint movement. Even if she couldn't see clearly, she didn't have to if she could get close enough. Heroes, even students, were so very much infected with a sense of fair play… The edges of the ring of fire were visible now, and it looked like there was a faint gap, just _there_ …

"You can't win. With Bloodtalon up there with Flyboy, he'll be chasing her from now until next year and never even notice. Stunning Bruin won't slow him down for long; he's too damn big. And once he's free, he'll free Skybolt and then Flyboy will be nothing but a roasted chicken," Cutter told him, eyes fixed on a middle distance, tracking the shadow-gap with her peripheral vision. _I can get in through there, cut the prey and be out before he can turn…_

She concentrated hard, wanting to snap to her left and forward… Burning pain seared along her body, and she snapped back to her original position, screaming. _Fuck, I ran right into the damn thing. Goddamn useless line of sight_ shit!

"Bastard! Give them to me!" she snarled, pulling out her knives. If she couldn't get him one way, she would get him another.

"Come get them yourself," Battle's son taunted. Cutter gritted her teeth at the determined look on his pretty face. _Going to wipe that damn look off his face, and take a few more things for good measure._

"Why protect them? You know what they wanted to do to you? They wanted to steal your life. Royal Pain would have raised you as another Baron Battle, as a psychotic flame-throwing monster under her own control. They aren't _worth_ saving," she snapped at him, stepping right up to the fire. The heat hurt her scorched skin, but it didn't matter, not as long as she could get close enough to stick him. _He could be kicking my ass right now if he wanted, but he won't leave the prey. Damned hero mentality bullshit._

Cutter waited a half-second for him to get angry, then lunged for the kill. The knives went low… the kiss was mostly for fun, as to not waste the pretty face before he died. Then the knives turned, tangling in fabric, not flesh, and Battle's son flared up with a look of hatred and disgust so strong Cutter froze. He reached out and grabbed her wrists with his burning hands, jerking her hands away from him and shoving her away.

She screamed and clutched her wrists close to her chest, almost missing the expression of shock on the pyro's face. _Too late for that now. Screw this, we're leaving_. Cutter snapped back to Painbreaker, grabbing her wrist again and teleporting them out. The pain was intense, and even the instructors at the academy wouldn't insist that they stay for the kill when they were going to get hurt this badly. No punishment they'd ever inflicted could match this pain…

* * *

Viper leaned down over the body of the guinea pig, taking a moment to be sure his poison was going to work the way he wanted to. Non-humans were harder, but not impossible after all his practice. A light distracted him, and he glanced up to see a tall, blonde kid in a silver coat practically on top of him.

" _Get off of her!"_ he screamed, and a single punch brought Viper's world to blackness.

* * *

Bruin began to bull through the leaves and trees surrounding Skybolt, using his massive weight, strength, and sharp claws to shred the foliage like paper. Above him he heard a scream, and jerked his gaze upward to look briefly. Heading right for him was a young boy, flying with incredible speed, Bloodtalon right on his tail. _Crap, got to get Skybolt out…_ He redoubled his efforts to get through the vines, hoping to give Skybolt the tiniest edge.

He saw Skybolt raise his arm as he finally partially freed him, and quickly turned his head away. Lightning flashed down, and he heard a faint thump from above. Daring the light, he had just enough time to get himself under Bloodtalon's falling body. Lightning flashed thick and fast, and Bruin tried to get himself out of the line of fire. He only had a tiny glimpse of something orange before blackness descended.

* * *

Skybolt screamed as the lightning crashed around him almost randomly, having lost the flying kid in the extravagant display of power. _Where is he? He's here somewhere; no one can take this kind of punishment, no one…_ This time he didn't even get a glimpse of his attacker, only a burst of pain and darkness.

* * *

Cutter was cursing the mission, the prey, the guardians, and almost everything else that crossed her mind. She was so focused she nearly missed her next chance, but Painbreaker stopped her with a hiss. Glowboy was back, and now that her eyes were clearing up, she wasn't going to waste an opportunity like this. A knife was out and at his throat before he could protest, and Painbreaker took the small limp form of a guinea pig _(A guinea pig?)_ from his hands.

"Don't hurt her," he whispered, and Cutter laid the edge of the knife harder along his throat.

"Shut it. Now _move,"_ she snarled. Cutter hauled him along to the gym, his bright glow making her eyes smart anew. Battle's son watched them come back into the gym with an expression of horror on his face. _Scared now, pretty boy?_

"Say a word, and I slice his throat and the rat dies in agony," Cutter said with deadly quiet menace. "Now, drop the fire and let those three decide how they're going to die."

The pyro looked frightened, stunned, alone, and the flames along his arms died. Cutter felt a moment of triumph, and a cruel smile stretched across her face, despite the pain in her wrists. Then the prey moved, for the first time. From docile to hostile in the blink of an eye, the leapt the firewall and went straight for her and Painbreaker.

The cloner surrounded her, kicking her hard in nearly every limb. Her right forearm went numb to the elbow as one smacked her funny bone, and she felt something tear in her left knee. Glowboy broke her grip and stumbled from the circle. Next to her, a long, striped arm plucked the guinea pig from Painbreaker's grasp, as a whirling blur whipped around her. The older girl began to gasp and fall to her knees as Cutter struggled to get her hands on her knives again.

Distantly she saw the long arm drop the guinea pig in the pyro's hands, and watched in amazement as red fire sprung along his arms, somehow not consuming the rat. Then a crash from above distracted her and the prey, as the flyer Bloodtalon was supposed to be covering broke through the ceiling. Everyone was distracted for a single critical moment, and Cutter seized it with both burned hands. One snap over to Painbreaker, and two more to get out of the gym, and she was out of their sight.

 _Got to be fast, no evidence… Crap, the car is still trapped. I have to teleport everyone out_. She snapped outside, the world flying by quickly. Her teeth were gritted in bitter disappointment, anger, and pain as she realized the rest of her group was down for the count. _Came here and were fucking outnumbered! Outgunned, outnumbered, outplanned, overconfident_ idiots! She snarled to herself as she picked up first Viper's body, then Bruin, Bloodtalon, and Skybolt.

It must have been several dozen miles of teleports before Bruin came out of the stun-reaction, cranky and whining about needing to be at work tomorrow. She nearly stabbed him out of frustration, but held onto her temper with both hands. Bruin was their tank, their bruiser, and in fights like this he could turn the tide. At the very least he had stopped Bloodtalon from serious injury, freed Skybolt, who had prevented Flyboy from capturing them all for a few critical seconds. The headmaster had made his value clear to her, and she didn't dare gut him just because he was frustrated. No matter how much better that would make her feel.

Cutter bared her teeth mentally at her prey's guardians, cursing to herself and knowing next time they fought, it was going to go so much worse for them…

_Cause everything that you thought I would be Has fallen apart right in front of you_


	13. Turnabout

 

"Guys that's Bruin!"

Bruin didn't even seem to recognize us, at least until Ethan said his name. Then he did a double take, took a closer look at Zack, and panicked. He leaped back from the car, his hands out to his sides, palms out in non-aggression, his face a mask of fear.

"Please, please, I didn't know who you were, I didn't know you would be here, don't hurt me!" he babbled. It was surreal; the man was as tall as I was, and built like a professional linebacker, but he was all but cowering before a car full of high school students.

My hands were practically glowing with heat as I prepared for a fight, and Magenta whispered to me to take them off the seat back before I set the car on fire. Will was holding the wheel tightly, as if he were a few seconds from ripping it off and throwing at the guy. Layla's hands were out, pointed at the trees besides the road, and Ethan and Zack were tensed and ready for action. The tableau held for another ten seconds before Bruin made the first move.

"This is my _cover job,_ " he said pleadingly. "Please, I don't want _them_ here. I don't want to fight in the park. I promise I won't say anything to anybody."

Will glanced back in the rearview mirror at me, and I nodded tightly. The guy was terrified and was telling the truth… but how the _hell_ was he _here_?

"How do we know we can trust you?" Will asked sharply.

"I've been working this job for ten years. I had _no idea_ you were going to be here. I don't know what I can say to make you trust me, but I won't tell them, I swear to God," he said, sweating and pale. "Look… how about we just start over? I'll just pretend to be a park ranger, and you pretend to a bunch of campers, and I won't even ask where you're camping, and we can forget this thing ever happened."

Weird on top of bizarre. _Forget this whole thing never happened, riiiiight…_ I thought. Then Will nodded at the guy.

"Hi, I'm Park Ranger Lewis, and welcome to Yellowstone park," he said cheerfully, and proceeded to give us a safety speech about a half-dozen topics, while the rest of us kept waiting for the roof to fall in at any minute. Layla was looking at Will as if he'd gone nuts, and the rest of us kept ourselves tense and ready until "Ranger Lewis" was done. Then the guy shoved a bunch of brochures into Will's hand, smiled stiffly, and nearly ran back to his station. Will calmly drove onward, and it took another two minutes of uneventful driving before we started talking again.

"Will, are you _crazy?"_ Layla demanded.

"No. I think he's telling the truth. And besides, we're going to be so far off his radar that he won't have any idea where to look for us even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't, I'm pretty sure," Will said calmly.

"This is insane. We should turn around and go home. We come here for a vacation and one of our enemies shows up?" Magenta pointed out.

"We're going to be fine. Trust me," Will said confidently.

"Will, all he has to do is track us," Ethan said, sounding scared.

"Well, he's not going to be able to do that. Because we're flying to our campsite," Will said shortly, and stopped the car.

Layla had enough time to squawk out a "What?!" before Will hopped out of the car, lifted it above his head, and took off. The road was deserted, the forests he dodged through were empty of people, and he flew low enough to avoid people seeing him from a distance. Despite that, there must have been enough noise from the car to startle every bird within a three-mile radius, most of them variations on questioning Stronghold's sanity. It was the fastest I had ever gone in my life, and the trees whipped past us in a blur.

* * *

In only a couple of minutes, Stronghold gently deposited the car near the grate that marked a campsite, looking terribly pleased with himself.

"Will… where are we?" Magenta asked, looking around uncertainly. "And can you find your way back?" Will tapped his watch.

"Built-in GPS; I got it for Christmas. It's what Mom uses to orient herself when flying across the ocean. I copied the coordinates down from one of the maps. We're clear on the other side of the park, so I'd like to see him try to find us," Will said stubbornly.

"So… why didn't you just fly us here in the first place?" Zack asked.

"I was trying to not be seen," Will said. "Anyway, we got ourselves a vacation and I'm _not_ going to let anything ruin it. Even that guy."

Will was right, as much as it pained me to admit it after that little stunt. While I might not agree with all the unwritten rules of the superhero world, there was one that even I would work with. _You never messed with someone else when you met them in their cover job._ That was an iron-clad rule, probably even adamantium-clad, even though it was as unwritten as the rest of them.

Sure, you could compete cover job to cover job, or superhero to supervillain, but never superhero to cover job, or visa versa. It was the only thing that kept people from retaliating back and forth, blowing everyone's cover, and making life impossible for super-people everywhere. Of course, if Royal Pain's brats were as crazy as Cutter, there was no telling how long that would last. But _we_ shouldn't be the ones to break that rule.

"You're crazy Stronghold," I said finally, and then began digging the tents out of the trunk.

"Warren, back me up here. We can't stay!" Layla said frantically.

"I am too tired to argue tonight, hippie," I growled. "Someone get firewood before I decide to light the car on fire." It was late fall in Maxville, but Yellowstone was both farther north and at a higher elevation, and it was _cold_ out here. There was even snow on the ground in places, and that was making for one very cranky pyrokinetic. I really was not in the mood to argue with Will's impulsive actions.

Besides, even if Bruin, or Ranger Lewis, or whatever his name was, decided to contact Cutter the very second he left our presence, she wasn't going to be able to find us. We were in the middle of a very big, very empty (relatively speaking) wilderness preserve, and this time we had the option of running if they decided to do something stupid, like come after us. And Layla had all the resources of this place at her fingertips. I wondered how Cutter would like to accidentally teleport into a tree if Layla kept moving them around?

Layla actually threw up her hands in exasperation and went to get firewood before I could carry through on my threat to ignite the car. Apparently deciding that dinner was more important than adjusting Will's attitude, Zack and Magenta broke out the food while the rest of us put up the tents.

"We're probably safe," Ethan offered tentatively as we struggled to set up a tent in the dying sunlight. "And the move was so unanticipated that can't see them being able to track us effectively." I muttered something that might have been agreement and kept to threading the poles through the tent. I had only done this a few times, but it was amazing how fast something like that came back to you when the alternative was sleeping on the cold ground.

Within a half-hour Will had joined Layla in bringing back firewood, and the rest of us had the tents up. I stopped Will from embarrassing himself with the matches and got the fire started myself, plunking a pot down to boil some of the water we had brought with us. The rest of the light was gone, and the fire made the only real light for miles. It looked strangely lonely out there… I turned my attention back to the fire.

"So… you're cooking?" Magenta asked.

"No, I'm boiling water for coffee," I growled. Damned cold air was making my temper short.

"How can you drink _coffee_ at this time of night?" Magetna asked.

"I didn't even see any coffee in the food bag…" Layla said uncertainly.

"That's because there wasn't. I swiped some from the teacher's lounge. And I have a high caffeine tolerance," I said.

"Dude, awesome!" Zack said, grinning brightly. Then he belated realized I really wasn't going to make any food for the rest of them, and fished out a packet of soup to throw in the water after I had gotten my water boiled.

"You ok Warren?" Ethan asked, concerned. I had gone from my usual taciturn to nearly monosyllabic before my drink was ready, and I downed half of it in one gulp without needing to let it cool, drawing a wince from everyone else.

"Better now. It's cold out here," I said shortly.

"I didn't know you could _get_ cold," Magenta said.

"You don't know a lot about me," I countered, and regretted it almost immediately when everyone exchanged knowing glances. _Too long of a day for this kind of crap now…_ I wasn't feeling well, not at all. It wasn't like we didn't have cold weather in Maxville, but I didn't usually get this bad, not even in winter, but tonight I felt like I absolute crap. I don't know if it was confronting Ethan this morning, the battle the night before, learning about our new arch-enemies, the long trip, meeting Bruin, Will's ridiculous stunt, or the cold weather, but I was getting more down by the minute.

"Hey Zack, could I get a light?" Ethan asked to change the subject, digging something out of his backpack.

"Sure man." Zack's yellow-green light began to fill the clearing, and Ethan carefully adjusted his glasses and began to read some papers he had extracted from the homework packet.

"Principal Powers wanted me to look at this tonight before we all turned in…"

"Good grief, she wants us to do homework _tonight?_ " Will asked.

Ethan shook his head absently. He read it once to himself, readjusted his glasses, read it again, and then cleared his throat.

"You all need to hear this. It's a letter from Principal Powers.

_To Mr. Stronghold, Miss Evans, Miss Patterson, Mr. Cramer, Mr. Howard, and Mr. Peace,_

_You don't really think I'd be such a tyrant as to send homework with you on a vacation, do you? Mr. Medulla has given you all passing grades on your Mad Science Power Enhancement final projects, and that will be more than enough until you return to school next week._

_I wanted to tell you how very proud I am of you. I'm sure your parents will tell you the same when they calm down. You are all extraordinary heroes. There is a reason I chose your group over all the groups of seniors, and it isn't just because you figured out our secret. You six have a close-knit friendship, a diverse array of talents, a willingness to try new things, a spirit of creativity, and boundless courage, determination, and loyalty._

_Your actions at Homecoming last year proved to me that you were going to be a first-class bunch, and it was in a large part your group participation in the defeat of Royal Pain that lead us to the kind of curriculum we're using this year._

"Man, we should have let her get away with it," Zack groaned, and Ethan thumped him to silence.

_Your willingness to aid Speed, Lash, and Penny was truly selfless. I know those three are difficult to get along with, and had caused some of you personal harm in the past. We hope to keep a closer eye on bullies of that sort at Sky High in the future, as the harm they do can no longer be tolerated, with the examples of the past in front of us as our evidence._

_Now, you may think it was strange that I sent you all directly here after your battle rather than to your homes to recover. My choice in this was very deliberate. By now I am attempting to explain my actions to your parents. I can guess their reactions, as can you, that they'll probably try to call for my resignation and then ground you all for the rest of your lives. Neither of those would be very useful or productive._

_I know you all feel as if you've made mistakes in your first battle, perhaps even grievous ones. I want you to work through them_ together _as much as you can, rather than with your parents. No one in any of your families had worked in a super-team before. While what advice they might tender may be useful, it won't necessarily be the kind of advice you need._

 _Superheroes of your parents' generation were trained to work alone or with a sidekick, or perhaps with a partner at best. Their triumphs and failures are very slanted towards being_ alone _in the field. What may be well and good advice for a lone superhero may very well harm your group. Whatever dynamics you work out amongst yourselves are going to be unique and without precedent amongst your parents' set._

_It may seem bizarre to ask high school students to work out their own problems, but I know you're all exceptionally mature young men and women._

"Has she every actually _met_ some of our group?" Magenta cut in, and Zack snickered.

_I honestly think you'll do this a lot easier out of the way of any kind of parental or scholastic pressure. If you are in need of help, or find something you can't work through during your vacation, I would recommend calling the Peacemaker, as she's the foremost expert in emotional troubles in the superhero world._

I choked on my coffee and Zack had to smack me on the back to get me breathing again. The principal of Sky High was now recommending my mother, the pariah of the superhero world for seventeen years, as the _expert_ on emotional troubles? Mom must have been winning her respect back with a vengeance!

"You ok Warren?" Layla asked, concerned.

"Yeah fine, just… surprised." I wish people would stop asking me that…

"There's a little more here…" Ethan added.

_You know you all have a long way to go as a group, but you've made the first few critical steps. I wanted to give you the peace and privacy to do what you can on your own. And I know of no place more peaceful or private than this one._

_Sincerely,_

_Veronica Powers, Sky High Principal_

_P.S. Call your parents at 5pm our time tomorrow or I can't be held responsible for their actions._

"I cannot believe she wrote that…" Magenta said after a minute. "She can't be serious."

"She dropped us in the middle of the woods for group therapy? No, I really can't believe it either, but that's what she wrote. Are you sure you grabbed the right packet Popsicle?" I asked, attempting to get my coffee actually into my stomach instead of down my jacket. _I am not up for something like this, not tonight, no way in hell…_

"Absolutely. She handed it to me herself this morning and told me to read it tonight," Ethan said, nodding firmly.

"Weird…" Will muttered, staring into the fire.

"We should-." Layla started, and then stopped again. "We should do it. What she said I mean. She's right."

"In the morning," I said firmly. "I need more sleep before any heartfelt confessions." If anyone started saying anything like that tonight I knew I was going to botch it in trying to help. I needed a good night's sleep, I needed warmth, I needed…

"I heard that," Zack muttered, and rose to head to his tent.

"Put out the fire guys; we're not going to be awake all night," Magenta added. Layla dumped a bucket of dirt on the fire and stirred it a bit with a stick, and Will went over and stood next to her, murmuring something to her.

 _Powers, you have got to be kidding yourself…_ I thought idly, and ducked into my tent. Ethan and I had to share one, but at least he was quiet tonight. I didn't think I could handle any more crises right now… It was too cold to even bother doing anything more than kick off my boots and crawl into the sleeping bag, and I must have been out within ten seconds of my head hitting the pillow, despite of how strange I felt. The silence around us was oppressive, aside from a few whispers from the others' tents that soon faded…

* * *

The next morning was a blur; I don't even remember it that clearly. I remember getting up and feeling cold, nearly as cold as I did the day I healed Zack. There was light, faint light from outside the tent. _Warm, need to get warm…_ I stumbled outside, and I remember thinking it must have been just barely dawn. _Cold, very cold…_ There was the fireplace… but it was cold too. I don't know why I didn't start a fire myself, but I remember something distracted me. There was white vapor… steam vapor wreathing through the trees. _Steam… warm… hot springs…_ I recalled vaguely there springs of hot water near our campsite. __Warm…__

* * *

My next clear memory of that morning is permanently graven into my brain with embarrassment. I opened my eyes and stared at the sky, finally feeling warm again. _Wait… staring at the sky; aren't I supposed to be in a tent?_ I realized I was floating… floating in hot water. _The hell, where am I?_ I thrashed for a second, realizing I was waist deep in hot water, in one of the hot springs I remembered vaguely thinking about this morning. And I wasn't wearing anything but my boxer shorts. _What the hell am I_ doing? I hadn't even begun to put things together when I heard a voice off to my right.

"Nice abs, Warren."

 _"Gah!"_ I yelled, whirling around to see who was there. Magenta was standing on the bank, her arms crossed and a mischievous smile on her face. I sunk back down to my neck in a lame attempt to cover up, flushing with embarrassment.

"What are you _doing_ here?" I demanded.

"Looking for you. You wandered out of camp without a note, and you left your boots behind," she said, holding them up. "I thought you might be in trouble. I just followed the melted footprints."

"I'm fine," I said, my teeth gritted, looking desperately around for my clothes. I swear if this was some kind of prank… Thankfully I spied my jeans and jacket on the bank opposite Magenta. "Look away, would you?"

"Hey, just because I'm with Zack doesn't mean I can't enjoy the scenery," she said, smirking. I had never actually felt the painful burning that came with really intense blushing before, but I was learning with a vengeance. She took pity on me and turned her back, and I scrambled out. Grabbing my clothes I did a quick-change behind the nearest tree, going into a near power-up to dry myself off.

"So… what _were_ you doing out here?" she asked when I came back into the open.

"I…" _have no idea_ , I finished mentally. "I was cold." _Damn, that was lame._

"So you came and threw yourself into a boiling hot pool of water in just your underwear? Maybe you should do that more often," she said, still smirking.

"Honestly… I have no idea how I got here. I don't remember anything past waking up and feeling cold this morning," I told her, ignoring her comment studiously.

"Weird… has that ever happened before?" she asked, falling in step with me as we headed back to camp.

"I don't think so…" I said slowly. My brain was getting back up to full speed now, and embarrassment was fading before worry. _What the hell is wrong with me? Am I going insane? I could have just wandered off and died out there if she hadn't come looking for me. Well, maybe not died, I'm indestructible, but I doubt I would have liked the outcome._

"Warren, are you all right?" Magenta asked, stopping dead. I took five more steps before I realized she wasn't walking anymore, and then turned and walked back to her. She looked concerned, even a little fearful.

_All right? Magenta you have no idea… I don't think I've ever been all right. A lot more all right than before you guys became my friends but still…_

"I sometimes… get a little weird after using my powers a lot. And being cold sometimes messes me up," I said finally. Magenta nodded in sympathy. I knew I could sometimes be unbalanced after a big fight; it was why I never stuck around too long after our Gauntlet runs. Powering down after something big like that sometimes took an emotional toll on me, and I knew it. Fatigue had helped keep it at bay two nights ago, but I was wondering if healing Magenta on top of everything else had managed to screw with my head some other way. Going to sleep in freezing temperatures must have just been the last straw. At least, I hoped that was it.

"I hear you; sometimes I wake up shifted, hidden in my closet after a bad dream. One time I woke up in the kitchen cupboard in a cereal box," she confessed. I laughed at that, maybe a little harder than I meant to.

"If you tell Zack about that, you're dead. Just consider that token payment for the 'nice abs' remark. I won't tell if you won't," she said sternly. Anything was preferable to telling everyone what happened this morning, so I agreed. We started walking for a few minutes in silence before she broke it again.

"So how long have you been working out, Ab-Boy?" she asked mischievously. She was going to milk this for all it was worth, apparently. I debated roasting her on the spot, then decided it wouldn't be worth the trouble. I really needed to keep the conversation on lighter things, and a little embarrassment was worth not having to answer tough questions. That was supposed to be my job, not hers…

"Since I was ten," I told her reluctantly.

 _"Ten?"_ she repeated incredulously.

"Kids used to beat me up. I taught myself how to be strong so I could fight back," I said, breathing carefully to control my anger. I wasn't feeling at all cold now; heat was surging down my arms and hands at the memories.

"Beat _you_ up?" Magenta asked, looking at me up and down.

"I wasn't born six foot two you know," I reminded her, and she shrugged.

"It just seems weird to think of you on the wrong end of something like that," she pointed out.

"I wasn't for long." I left it at that. Let her guess how many fights I was in, how many I lost, and how many I "won." Too many, that's for sure, too damn many either way…

"I never thanked you for healing me," she said, suddenly changing the subject.

"I… sure," I said, shrugging. My new power still made me uncomfortable a lot of the time. It was easier to wave it off, make it seem like it wasn't any big deal. I realized Magenta had stopped again and turned around. She had the weirdest expression on her face, confused and angry and determined all at once. _What did I say to set her off?_

"Warren, just _listen_ to me for a minute. I have something to say," she said, and I waited, uncertain where this was going.

"I… we all talked when we got up this morning and found you gone," she started, and I felt the heat begin to surge anew along my arms. I knew I wasn't going to like this.

"We're not blind; we see what you've been doing to help all of us. I mean, you even saw what was going on with Ethan before the rest of us did. He told me what happened with Viper. I don't think he would have done that if you hadn't convinced him to."

"You're my friends-." I started to say, but Magenta cut me off.

"We don't know that much about you, or your family, other than what Mrs. Richards practically forced out of you in class. But we know you're a good guy, and you're our friend. I know you've been trying to help everyone with their problems… but you won't come to us with any of yours. I mean, you're trying to keep all of us from going off the deep end, but you have yourself shut up so tight, how're we supposed to know when _you're_ about to?

"Zack told me what you said to Speed, Lash, and Penny the other night, and we all heard what you were telling them in Principal Powers' office. And now that suddenly makes a whole lot more sense because you were once in Ethan's shoes. Look Warren, we all want to keep from hurting you, but it's kinda hard because you're an unmarked minefield when it comes to anything personal!"

 _Damn, damn, damn!_ Why was she doing this to me? I had felt vulnerable in the pool, but now I felt twice as exposed. Ok, so I had been taciturn when it came to my past… any of my past… ever. I never really talked about my feelings, and I clammed up with anyone tried to pry about them, and I probably wouldn't have told them about my family at all if we hadn't been doing it for a class project. Why was _Magenta_ calling me on this? She hadn't asked this kind of stuff for the year she'd known me. Why now?

"I think Principal Powers is right, and that may be the only time you every hear me say that out loud. We all screwed up two nights ago; we all made mistakes. We probably do need to talk about them. But we need you to talk too. Really talk, this time.

"You know why I'm saying this to you? Because of what you did for me and Zack. He never told me he loved me until he nearly died. And I couldn't until I nearly did. You helped us, but never let us, any of us, help you. You're going around trying to set everything right, but you're never letting yourself get in too deep. You brush off your healing like it's nothing. We can _feel_ you get angry sometimes but don't know why; you wander off without remembering anything but don't want to talk about it-."

 _"Stop!"_ I shouted. My eyes were shut tight and the heat was surging hard along my hands. Fire erupted from them, and I stood still, struggling for control.

"You're trying to set us all straight when you're the worst off of all of us. We're afraid you're going to burn yourself up inside one day," Will said from somewhere above my head. I glanced upwards; watching Will slowly alight next to Magenta. Layla, Ethan, and Zack walked out from the mist and steam-shrouded forest, standing shoulder to shoulder with the others.

"You… you set this up?" I whispered. I was too surprised to be angry, and the flames died on my hands.

"Hey, you've been setting us straight the whole year. Turnabout is fair play Warren," Will said, his chin up defiantly. "We only set up the talking part… We didn't expect you to wander out of camp and try to boil yourself."

"Damnit Stronghold!" I snapped, embarrassed again.

"Warren, you wouldn't have said anything about this if you had managed to sneak back into camp before we got up. And if it ever happened again, we would have had no idea what was going on the next time it happened," he pointed out. "And if we're all going to spill our guts, you're doing it too."

My brain practically felt like it was on fire and there was a massive headache behind my eyes. _When the hell did they get so worried about me? Were they actually_ learning _from me?_ Vulnerable, that's how I felt right now; it wasn't an easy thing to bear. The only time I had ever really talked about what I felt was the one day in class when we discussed when we first powered up, and that had been like pulling teeth. _Do I trust them enough to trust them with… me?_

"Ok… ok…" I said finally, the heat and pain slowly fading. _Was it that simple to really trust?_ I didn't know. "But… why did you guys send out Magenta to be the sacrificial lamb?"

"Because we figure you wouldn't hit me when you found out," she said simply. "Besides, I know how to act. Will couldn't act his way out of a paper bag."

I laughed weakly at that.

"Let's go back to camp; I need breakfast," Zack said, waving us back the way they had come. I tried to trail behind, as usual, but Will wouldn't let me. I realized they had all been giving me my space for the year we had known each other… Did he realize I got claustrophobic in a crowd? _Duh, of course not, because you haven't told him. Moron. Looks like you get the clue-bat to the head today. Though that actually felt more like a clue-jackhammer._

"So… Who came up with this scheme?" I asked.

"Ethan, mostly. He kinda pieced together everything," Will told me, and then smiled. "Look, that was harsh of us… but…" He trailed off, uncertain.

"It doesn't make you any less right, even if you guys have the tact of a sledgehammer," I finished. Will snorted.

"Yeah, you're right," he agreed, and put an arm around my shoulders. I automatically stiffened up.

"Don't. I'm still running pretty hot," I warned.

"You can't hurt me," Will pointed out.

"I'm just not used to it," I snapped. Will took his arm away. "Look, I spent nearly all my life trying to keep everyone away. I get a little claustrophobic around too many people."

Will smiled a bit and put his hands in his pockets.

"Ok, now I know," he said simply.

 _First confession. So far… so good. Was that so hard, Peace?_ Yes, yes it was. But it was also all right.


	14. Opening Up

 

Walking back into the campsite should have felt like walking into my own funeral. I was rattled, my stomach was churning, and my head was spinning, but somehow I couldn't feel too bad with the early morning sunlight illuminating the scene. It was like watching a horror movie in the daytime: not nearly so scary.

I plopped down on one of the log benches and stared into the fireplace, realizing after a second that it was littered with kindling, a dozen burned matches, and a lighter that had been crumpled as if by a super-strong fist. I started to chuckle, and Layla looked at me very strangely. I pointed to the fireplace and Will gave a shrug.

"Had a little trouble with the fire, Stronghold?" I asked, still laughing.

"Just a bit… Wait, no, actually a lot," he said, rolling his eyes and sitting down next to Layla.

"Stand back and watch a master at work," I said, shaking my head and getting my laughter under control. I powered up a bit and built the fire up pretty high. I decided that cold didn't agree with me at all, and wanted to avoid another wandering incident.

"Jeez Warren, you trying to roast us all?" Zack complained, shrugging off his jacket in the heat. I took another deep breath to try to get calm. It was like knowing a train wreck was coming and being unable to avoid it…

"I don't want to get cold again. I don't know what happened to me this morning," I said, reaching into the fire to adjust the logs a bit. "Look… can we start somewhere else? When did you guys set this up anyway?" I asked, wanting to get the subject on something a little less raw.

"A few weeks ago," Ethan volunteered. "I mean, I had put together a lot of things, from what Will and Layla mentioned you said to them, and what we talked about this summer… I just wasn't sure how to put it together. Then we uncovered the conspiracy and were doing our practice to protect Speed, Lash, and Penny… I thought it would be easier to wait until after that before dropping this on you."

"Thanks," I said softly.

"So Principal Powers gave me this letter, and I told her I thought this might be a good time to do this. She agreed with me… and… umm…" he trailed off, looking a little embarrassed.

"And what?" I not-quite snapped.

"She had me call the Peacemaker for advice before we left on this trip," he added quickly, and winced reflexively. I'm sure Ethan was expecting me to explode at that, to get angry and yell at him for even thinking about talking to _my mother_ before confronting me with something like this. Anyone else would have, and maybe a year ago I would have too. But it was my mom's job to know peoples' hearts, to solve problems, to heal emotional wounds. If they had gone to anyone else _but_ her I might have actually been mad.

If she had agreed with him, then she thought this was something I both needed and could handle. It didn't mean it was going to be easy, but she obviously thought it was important that it happen now. If she hadn't, she would have talked him out of it.

"Smart move," was all I said, and calmly reached for my mug. I grabbed boiling water and my can of coffee and finished off half the mug before Ethan realized he could stop wincing.

"'Smart move'…? I thought you'd be mad!" he exclaimed.

"That's her job; to help people with problems. She's very good at what she does," I pointed out. I could practically hear the question they wanted to ask next- but didn't dare. I bit the bullet and asked it for them. "So you're all wondering how I ended up as a hair-trigger rage-fueled near-psycho if she's so good at her job?"

They nodded cautiously and I took a deep shuddering breath. "I might flare up, so give me some space," I said. Then I slowly started to tell them about Mom and Baron Battle. Two Sky High students in the theater department, similar interests and attitudes, falling in love, getting married, and going off to fight crime together, if not side-by-side.

"Sounds kinda like my parents so far," Will offered cautiously.

"Yeah, but your parents are sane," I pointed out. I told them how my dad started to get obsessed, and how Mom didn't want to use her powers on him until it was too late.

"She said love blinded her," I told them. "By the time she wanted to use her powers, she couldn't. Not until she was pregnant with me. She told me it was like he had killed everything moral and ethical inside him, but he still loved her anyway. That seriously messed her up, and she could barely make the call to stop him when he… went to the World Diplomatic Summit."

"Dude…" Zack said in an awed tone of voice.

"Yeah… then the Commander captured him, he and Mom divorced, and everyone blamed her for what happened. They even thought she had made him do it for a little while. She lost all her credibility, her confidence, her friends, and her self-respect, moved back to the States, went inactive when I was two, and spent the next seventeen years crying herself to sleep." I had to stop there for a second, fire surging up and down my hands and arms with my anger. I looked at all of their faces, as I had been staring into the fire until now. They all looked surprised, interested, sad, or sympathetic, but not disgusted or disbelieving. Will looked angry, but I knew he was angry on my behalf rather than angry with me.

"The kids knew my dad was in jail when I was growing up. I got bullied a lot, so I learned how to fight back. You know I was practicing when I powered up… Mom had told me about my dad just in case I ended up with his powers. Right after I powered up I had to go meet him, in Metroplex, so he could train me how to use them." My hands were clenched hard around my mug, and the coffee was boiling into steam at the heat in them.

"He's a stone cold, self-righteous, manipulative bastard and if he hadn't been very, very neutral with me when he showed me how to use my powers, I would have tried to beat his face in. That one visit really messed up Mom again, and I didn't want her to every have to worry about me. So I made sure no one would ever get close to me again… because I powered up too easily, and I could see myself roasting some smug bullying idiot if they crossed me."

"And Sky High was worse because people really knew what your dad had done," Will said, filling in the blanks.

"You have no idea Stronghold. You… you look a lot like the kind of preppy jerks that were on my case when I was younger. That wasn't a good day for me, and then you actually mentioned my father in front of the whole cafeteria-"

"That was pretty dumb of me," Will said sheepishly.

"I was trying to _kill_ you!" I blurted out before he could interrupt again. "It wasn't even your fault, I just went completely psycho and tried to _kill you!"_

I had to stop there for a little bit, blazing away even more than the fire in the fireplace as I tried to bring myself back down again. Everyone waited, not exactly sure what to say, myself perhaps the most uncertain of all. I finally took a deep breath and started again.

"I thought I was becoming like my dad. In the detention room, when I told you I would roast you alive if you crossed me… I wanted you to stay as far away from me as possible, because the next time I don't think I could have stopped.

"I… made a promise to myself when I got my powers that my mom would never have to get a call saying that I had misused them. I had broken that, and I was afraid to go home, because I thought it would have killed my mom to hear about it." I paused again, and then turned to Stronghold.

"Will, after the fight, what did your parents say to you?"

"Uh… my mom was pretty mad. But Dad took me to the Secret Sanctum, and gave me a hug because he was really happy I got his powers," Will said, not really looking at me. It wasn't right and wasn't fair and he knew it.

"And you got an X-box," Layla added, and Will nodded miserably. I closed my eyes for a minute, because the next thing was maybe the hardest.

"I cried. I went home and mom was there and I cried," I said softly. "I told her what happened… she told me a lot about myself… and about her. She said… she didn't want to be afraid of what happened with my dad anymore. She… was wearing her superhero costume. It was the first time I ever remember seeing her in it. She said… she wanted to use her powers to help me, and if I'd let her… she'd feel strong enough to go active again. So I let her."

I stopped there again and folded up my knees to my chest and rested my forehead on them. I had finally managed to power down again, but I was shaking hard. It was absolutely silent aside from the snap and crackle of the fire, and I was trying very, very hard not to cry in front of my friends. It was almost like reliving it while I was saying it, and that had to have been one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life. I don't know exactly what they were expecting when they sprung this on me, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't this.

When I was sure I wasn't going to break down, I peered up at them. Shock was perhaps the most prevalent expression on everyone's faces, almost horror. No, they hadn't been expecting this, not really. Mom hadn't prepared them… that meant they were learning a lot more from this than simply my past. Like… learning how someone seemingly strong could feel like this.

There was a faint noise next to me, and Will put his arm around my shoulders, hugging until I heard my bones creak a bit. I didn't look at him, I stared at the fire, but he waited until the last the shaking was gone before letting go.

"Thanks," I said very quietly. That had helped… He had no idea… And at least I couldn't hurt him; I wasn't on fire anymore, but I was still practically in a near power-up with the pent-up emotion.

"What power?" Ethan asked in a small voice. He knew Mom had more than one; he studied nearly all the heroes in his books. I was just relieved that he wasn't going to try to ask anything else right then.

"Peacemaker's touch… Go ahead," I said, and waved for him to do the honors of explaining. He would do a better of job of explaining it than I would right now, and he waxed on enthusiastically in an attempt to enlighten everyone else.

"So… she made you… less mad?" Zack asked.

"More like… gave me more time to think about why I was mad. It didn't last too long, only a few days, but it helped a lot," I clarified. I finally uncurled a bit and took a look at my coffee mug. I had boiled it dry. I scowled at it and put it back on the bench.

"Why do you think I went from trying to kill you to helping you in Save the Citizen? It wasn't because I was afraid of Principal Powers," I pointed out to Will. I was a lot calmer now, and talking was getting easier again. Will got a thoughtful look on his face, and then nodded.

"Well, Save the Citizen wasn't your choice," he said.

"I could have just turned on you, if I had still been mad. You humiliated me in that fight," I told him, and he looked embarrassed. "I picked a fight with a freshman sidekick whose dad jailed mine and I lost. How pathetic does that look?"

"I… didn't even think of that," Will said, looking shamed. I waited a few seconds, and then sighed.

"Ok, ok, that's about enough for right now. Can I get some food?" I said a bit more loudly.

"Yeah, yeah, food, that sounds awesome," Zack said quickly, and started to dig through the food bag. Everyone else unfroze and started rummaging around for their dishes. They were nearly as shaken up as I was, and just as ready for a break. We sat around eating oatmeal in silence, everyone mostly staring into space.

"Look, I'm honestly not sure what happened to me this morning. I really don't remember anything. I woke up, I remember feeling cold, I got out of the tent… and then Magenta found me," I said finally. I knew that was going to be their next question, and I felt a lot better if I could pick when we dealt with it.

"Is it the weather? Have you ever slept outdoors before when it's cold?" Ethan asked.

"Actually…" I thought about that for a minute. "No, I don't think I have… Crap, it isn't that simple an explanation is it?" Ethan shrugged.

"I don't know for certain, but it might be part of it. Call Nurse Spex after we talk to our parents tonight. At least we can make sure you don't get chilled again, and see if that helps," Ethan said.

"Yeah, we can park you in the hot springs," Magenta suggested, a smirk on her face. I glared at her, but she was unrepentant.

"I think I'm going to take a walk now. Clear my head a bit," I said with as much dignity as I could, and got up.

"Can I come?" Will asked, and I shrugged.

* * *

We walked in silence for a few minutes, until I realized I was heading for the hot springs again. Well… ok fine, I wanted to go there. I just wanted to soak up the heat around them a little. Will didn't say a word the entire time, and I picked one of the pools at random, and lay down on the warm ground near the edge. Will simply stared into them for a long minute, and then sat abruptly.

"So?" I asked. "Ask whatever it is you're going to before you explode." Stronghold looked like he was holding back some huge secret, and he had gotten very, very quiet near the end of my talk at the campfire. He wasn't a quiet guy, and it wasn't like him to hold back from saying something. He had been too quiet on the walk here, and I knew something was up.

"Bloodtalon," he blurted out.

"I just had my bleeding heart on display back there Stronghold; I'm not thinking so straight. Spit it out," I warned. I winced inside at my own clumsiness. I knew what he wanted to ask, and despite the fact that I was feeling a little raw, it didn't excuse failing Will. Maybe I needed to spill my guts to them, but they still needed me too. "Sorry, that was stupid. Bloodtalon… You said… you wanted to kill her."

Will's face contorted in anger and sorrow, and I saw him dig his fingers into the ground. No wait… solid stone. He clenched into it, and held on as if to a lifeline.

"What you said back there about wanting to kill me in the cafeteria… I just… What the principal said about us all making mistakes… I don't know…"

"You're the leader and you spent most of the fight trying to rip a bird apart instead of helping us. Magenta got hurt, Zack got captured, Layla went into power-exhaustion trying to protect you, and every single one of them got away," I said calmly, trying to put into words what Will couldn't. There was a grinding noise as Will started to shred solid stone between his fingers.

"I don't think I would have got why that made you so upset, that you wanted to kill me, if Bloodtalon hadn't tagged me," he said. "I got sick afterward; I went behind the detention center and threw up."

"What did Layla say to you to get you down?" I asked.

"Umm… Some private stuff…" he started.

"You don't have to give me the damn details Stronghold," I snapped. Will winced, realizing how selfish he sounded, considering what I had just been through.

"She told me some stuff we had said when we were little, things we promised. She told me she loved me too," he said quickly.

"Did that help?"

"I… yeah… It was kind of how she said it too," he said, and I heard gravel falling to the ground.

"Think about it this way: you got angry because someone literally made you angry. I got angry because I wanted to. I need to ask you a favor." That got Will's attention, and he let go of the ground. "If we ever end up fighting them again and if Bloodtalon ever tags me… You have to promise me you'll take me out."

"What?" Will asked, incredulous.

"Anger doesn't just _trigger_ my powers, it _fuels_ them. Think about it."

"Oh… my God," he said after a second. "You just better make sure you turn her into a roasted turkey before that happens!" he threatened. I laughed a little, and pushed myself back up.

"Deal. Come on, I think it's time someone else put their guts on public display. I'm about done for today."

* * *

"Hey guys, it's nearly five. Time to call," Ethan stopped us in the middle of preparing dinner.

The rest of the afternoon hadn't been quite as intense as the morning had been. I had talked a little more about what had happened at the Paper Lantern, finally thanking Layla for being the first one to have ever offered me a genuinely friendly gesture. That had gotten her blushing, and eventually led to a private discussion between her and Will. I was about tapped out for the day in heartfelt confessions, and Zack, Ethan, and Magenta were more than ready to agree with me. I was wondering if it was more for their sake than mine that we agreed to hold off for more until tomorrow though.

Nearly everyone winced at Ethan's announcement, but doggedly pulled out their cell phones. "This might get a little loud," he pointed out, and moved a bit away, and everyone took the hint.

I actually delayed a moment as everyone dialed, listened for about ten seconds, and then almost simultaneously pulled their phones away from their ears to listen to them from a distance. _Heh…_ that _was funny_. At least my mom already knew, and at least she would be a lot more reasonable about it.

I finally called her, the signal going through loud and clear. Our cell phones were boosted to be able to be used anywhere, as part of the upgrade that would eventually let us be called when we were superheroes. It simply wouldn't do to say, "Sorry that your downtown was trampled by a giant robot, Mr. Mayor, but I just didn't have service out by the lake."

"Warren! Oh honey it's so good to hear from you. You will not believe the antics I've had to put up with today," she said, and I laughed a bit. I was more than willing to let her talk first; I had been doing more than enough talking today.

"So, it was that bad?"

"Terrible, Steve and Josie were perhaps the most reasonable about the whole thing, but that's because they know _their_ son is virtually invulnerable. The Pattersons and the Cramers nearly had Veronica's head on a platter for putting their children in such danger, and the Howards were just a short step behind them. And Sunshine Evans nearly had an aneurysm when she found out her daughter was using her powers offensively."

I looked over at Layla and saw her face was practically crumpled in tears, and throttled down anger before I could melt the phone. _Shove a non-violent philosophy down your daughter's throat, send her to Sky High, and then get mad when she has to use them to defend someone else? Hypocrite._

"I had to defuse three attempts to overthrow the school by force and forestall about a half-dozen attempts for them to leave and fetch you back immediately." She sighed, and sounded very tired. "Veronica wanted me present more for my powers than the fact that I'm your mother. I had to invoke crowd control at least five times, and it's _very_ hard leaning on trained minds like that. Then she showed them the tapes and I had to practically sit on them with my powers to keep them from doing something drastic. The Pattersons were screaming at Veronica, and I hope to never hear such language come out of Jessica Patterson's mouth again. I had no idea she knew words like that…"

"Jesus Christ, she showed them the _tapes?"_ I half-yelled.

"They practically forced her to. Warren, you were amazing honey," she said warmly, and I blushed furiously. "I've never been so proud of you before in my life."

"Mom… I burned someone," I pointed out, feeling a little sick. "You saw that. I…"

"She deserved it. She tried to gut my baby and if I had been there she would have gotten worse than that!" Mom said tartly, not letting me feel sorry for myself.

"Did Principal Powers tell them why we were out here instead of home?"

"Yes, once they calmed down a bit. They didn't like it, but I eventually convinced them. They tried to turn on me once they figured out I had already known about this, but I'm not taking any of their lip anymore. Sunshine Evans is a little too idealistic for her own good sometimes." She sighed a bit. "So, how's it going out there?"

"Oh, I just feel like I ripped my guts out through my chest, but other than that, fine," I commented.

"Ah, your friends finally confronted you?" she said, completely without shame.

"I've been in confession-mode all day. It's worse than running the Gauntlet."

"It's bound to be; you've locked up everything you are so tightly I'm surprised you let them have the keys. And getting it out _will_ be painful, I told them to expect that."

"Mom… something really weird happened this morning, before they talked to me." I told her about my inexplicable behavior in the cold, and I heard her going "hmm…" in the background.

"We're still at Sky High, let me get Nurse Spex." She was worried, I could tell, but I wasn't going to call her on it. I'd probably be worried too, if I were her. In a minute, Nurse Spex got on the line and I went over everything again.

"It almost sounds like you were in shock, dear," she said after a minute. "If I had had any idea where Principal Powers was sending you, I would have objected, believe you me. Freezing cold weather is no place for someone like you, at least without proper protection."

"I'm indestructible. I don't get sick, I don't get hurt… Why is this hitting me so _hard?"_ I demanded. Will was supposed to be counting on me to take up the slack if he failed, but how dependable was I going to be if a little cold weather or thin air was going to make me lose my mind?

"You have unique weaknesses dear, and I think you've just had a streak of bad luck to make them all come to a head at once. You ran yourself into near power-exhaustion during that fight. You used your new power on a very profound injury. You had a very emotionally draining fight, and since your powers are linked to your emotions, that had double the effect on you. Then you were thrown into an entirely unsuitable environment on top of everything else. If you had had another day's rest in a warm bed and had gone out there with better gear, I think you would have been fine," Nurse Spex explained.

"It sounds… too simple," I said.

"Well, better that then knowing someone used a freeze ray or a mind-scrambler on you while you were asleep. If you don't think you can keep yourself warm, you probably need to come home, but otherwise you should be all right if you take care," she pointed out.

"Yeah… I think I can."

"Good, good, let me get your mother back on the phone then." There were a few muffled words, than Mom was back on again.

"She told me, Warren. Are you sure you're going to be all right honey?" Mom asked.

"Yeah… I'm going to park myself in those hot springs until we go home. That should do the trick," I said lightly. Though that wasn't such a bad idea, now that I thought about it…

"Well, how are your friends taking it?" "It" in this case, meant more than one thing.

"Taking me? Fine, I'm pretty sure. Taking what their parents are saying…" I turned and looked around, seeing various expressions of frantic pleading, near-hysteria, and guilt on my friends' faces. "Bad." Mom sighed.

"I was afraid of that. I'll keep working on them or they're going to undo everything."

"So Mom… Why aren't you trying to keep me out of this too?" I asked. She had to be as worried for me as anyone else's parents were, but she was being worlds beyond reasonable about the whole thing. I knew she didn't want to upset me or undermine my confidence, but I needed to know if she needed to vent.

"A lot of reasons…" she started.

"Like I'm indestructible and not as fragile as say… Magenta?" I asked, mostly joking.

"No," Mom said more sharply, "Though the Pattersons are going to have to realize that their little girl, guinea pig shapeshifter or not, is quite capable of doing hero work.

"No Warren, it doesn't have to do with your powers. I promised you that I wouldn't let my own fear of my past keep me from doing a job that I love. And I also promised myself that I would never let my fear hold you back. You're my strong, clever, wise son who desperately wants and needs to prove himself. I won't hold you back from your destiny, no matter if it scares me."

I was stunned, and actually took the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a minute. It wasn't that my mom had ever coddled me, because she hadn't, but just an admission of maturity and responsibility like that was not what I had expected. _I can do this… I really can… She believes in me._

"I love you Mom," I whispered.

"I love you too Warren."


	15. Firelight

 

By the time the rest of my friends got off their phones, it was well past dark. I had built the fire up, gone out for firewood, made dinner, cleaned up from making dinner, and gone through a short workout before their parents let them go. _Must have been bad news; only bad news takes that long to talk about._

They all plopped down after snapping their phones shut, not really looking at each other or me, staring into the fire with blank expressions. I waited another five minutes before breaking the silence.

"So…?" I asked. Magenta sighed and finally broke first.

"Not as bad as I thought," she said finally. "Dad was freaked out, but at least he didn't forbid me from seeing you guys again. Mom was better about it… but still thinks I'm crazy. She was all upset I got hurt… then I told her _I_ was more upset about it than she was, but I wasn't going to let it stop me. And then _that_ started a whole bunch of stories about _her_ career and her sister's too and that took up the rest of the time."

"Useful stories, or just horror stories?" I asked.

"Kinda useful. She talked about tough fights she had been in… I think she was trying to agree with me without actually saying so. I think it's going to be ok… at least my aunt's on my side," she said carefully. "Mom can turn into a hyena, but Aunt Laurel turns into a peregrine falcon. At least she understands about how a little shapeshifter can fight."

"Wait, wait, wait, your aunt's _Sparrowhawk?_ " Ethan asked incredulously. "Mrs. Richards' hero? Why didn't you say anything in class?"

"And how did the Pixie end up as a sidekick to her?" Layla asked.

"I didn't say anything because I saw what happened with Mr. Boy and Will," Magenta answered, rolling her eyes. Will laughed a bit. "And how do you _think_ they ended up how they did? The gym teacher that year –whoever he was- decided turning into little falcon was more hero-worthy than growing butterfly wings."

"So, you think Sparrowhawk's going to run interference for you?" I asked. My mom's job would get a hell of a lot easier if family members started helping…

"I hope so," Magenta sighed. "You know why I never let you guys watch my Gauntlet sessions? Because I was afraid you'd say something in front of my family… and I hadn't told them that I was going to be a full-fledged hero yet. Dad still thinks I'm going to be eaten or stepped on or something. He was cool with me being a Sidekick, but Hero… not so much."

"Super Guinea Pig of Doom, and don't let 'em say otherwise!" Zack jumped in, grinning widely at Magenta. She managed to hold back an answering smile for only a few seconds.

"What about you?" Will asked Zack.

"Eh… went ok. All my sisters are Sidekicks, so it's not like I'm the only one Dad has to worry about," he said shrugging. His family being what they were easily explained Zack's casual attitude about his powers, and his endless enthusiasm over what could be termed the weakest power in our group.

All three of his older sisters had weak electricity powers; Alexandria was Luma, and could make light bulbs glow even if they were off. Krystal was Switch, and could turn on electrical things from a distance. Emily was Recharge, and could charge up batteries or appliances. Nothing really spectacular, but they had been through Sky High and in the hero business for several years. Whatever worries his parents had about him they had already gone through three times already. Mom was probably having the easiest time with them, I bet.

" _My_ dad's still trying to get that we might not be the 'Stronghold Three.' I mean, I guess he was really looking forward to that… but…" Will shrugged. "I want to fight with you guys. Mom and Dad are great on their own. I want to do my own thing." I waited for another few seconds, and then flicked my eyes to Layla. She was leaning against Will, her face half-buried in his shoulder. She shook her head slightly.

"It's ok," Will whispered to her.

"Mom yelled at me for using my powers like I did," she said softly.

"So?" I asked, a little sharply. "You wrapped people up; it wasn't like you impaled them."

"She never wanted me to use my powers for violence…"

"I don't think any of us wanted to," Ethan spoke up. I looked at him, surprised. "Really, I mean who wants to go out and hurt people? Remember what Coach Boomer said, we might not like what we have to do, because we're heroes, but sometimes we _have_ to do it anyway."

"Popsicle's right, hippie. She'll get used to it," I added. Layla blinked rapidly, getting the remains of tears out of her eyes, then took a deep breath and nodded. Silence reigned for another few minutes, the fire crackling and popping.

"Dad and Mom didn't know where I was on the tapes," Ethan said into the quiet. It was hard to read his face; his glasses were reflecting the firelight, but his tone was tight, controlled. "They didn't know what to say to me. I had to tell them… I was afraid. Dad… Dad understood, I think."

"What did your mom say, Warren?" Will asked after a second. _Not going to let me off the hook, eh Stronghold?_

"She already knew. She's fine with it," I said calmly.

"Hey, we weren't supposed to say anything!" Layla protested, sitting upright.

"Oh… that's right, you can't lie to the Peacemaker," Ethan said suddenly. I nodded.

"That's what I was talking about with Principal Powers last week," I explained.

"Dude, so you've _never_ lied to your mom?" Zack asked, looking a little horrified. Apparently everyone else carefully balanced their relationship to their parents on stacks of little white lies. Well, at least partly.

"Never successfully. I stopped trying to lie to her when I was five," I explained.

"Harsh," he said, looking sympathetic.

"It's not that bad. She's never lied to me either, not even about Santa."

"Wait, Santa isn't real?" Zack exclaimed, looking alarmed. Magenta smacked him in the back of the head. I chuckled at them both and shook my head.

"Oh wait… I understand. Your mom was at Sky High with the rest of our parents… That's why we're still _here_ and not back at home," Ethan said suddenly.

"Clever, Popsicle," I admitted. I was glad someone else had put two and two together finally.

"Thanks for small favors, I do _not_ want to talk to my mom again before Aunt Laurel does," Magenta said with a sigh of relief.

Another odd silence descended. It wasn't exactly an _uncomfortable_ silence, just one not quite sure where it wanted to go yet.

"I think I know why I froze," Ethan said out of the blue. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he ducked his head again. "Sorry, I was just thinking about what I said to my dad… I didn't… I don't want to let that happen again. I nearly… got you killed Magenta."

"Ethan it's ok, it was a fluke-," Magenta protested.

"I… don't know if it was. But lemme try to explain. I think I was afraid of getting tainted," he said softly.

"Tainted? That a fancy word for poisoned?" Zack asked.

"No it… look, most people are about seventy percent water. Er, most _normal_ people are anyway," he clarified, looking around at all of us. "I'm about eighty-five percent. I tend to… pick up qualities of energies and chemicals if I'm not careful. I remember my dad and my uncles and aunts telling me about some of their fights… and the ones they lost they tended to lose the same way. They'd get tainted and something would get messed up. Look, I'll show you."

Ethan stood up, the glare leaving his glasses so we could finally see his face again.

"Uh… it's ok Ethan, really, you don't have to-," Magenta started. Ethan shook his head.

"It'll be educational," he said with an uneasy smile, and unceremoniously melted. He casually oozed right next to the fire and parked himself on one of the stones. The fire-hot stones. I watched with alarm, remembering what happened to him when Pulsar hit him with her heat-blasts in the Gauntlet, but Ethan didn't seem to be in any particular distress. He sat on the hot stone for several long minutes, until he started to bubble, then oozed back and resolidified.

"Touch my hand," he said, sticking one out. He was sweating and breathing a little heavy, but didn't look burned, which was really odd. Everyone leaned in slowly and touched him. To me, most people feel cool, unless they have a fever, in which case they feel lukewarm. Ethan felt neutral, my temperature.

"Holy cow, you're hot dude!" Zack exclaimed, jerking his hand back.

"Yeah… and now I need to go melt some snow, be right back," Ethan said quickly, and dashed out of camp. There was a sound like water hitting hot metal, and a faint cloud of steam rose up from the direction of a snowdrift just outside of our camp. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't there anymore. Ethan came back a minute later, looking damp but otherwise fine.

"So… what was that supposed to prove?" I asked, a little concerned. "And how was that different from what Pulsar did to you?"

"Just… a demonstration. I pick up properties like heat or cold, _if_ I have time to react properly, or chemicals, even if I don't. Water… can absorb a lot of heat or lose it before it changes state," he said, taking on a more normal lecturing tone.

"So you could freeze like T-1000 in T2?" Zack asked.

"Umm… probably. I wouldn't want to test that though. But it was the chemicals that I was worried about." He sighed. "It was the poison. Viper was dripping poison from every pore. I remember Dad telling me he once got dropped into a vat of oil and left it everywhere he touched for a month afterward."

"So… if you had touched Viper… you would have _become_ poison?" Will said slowly. Ethan nodded, sitting back down and staring at the fire again, the glare hiding his eyes.

"Tainted. That stupid custom I told you guys about at Christmas? That's the reason; it takes my family a while to get themselves… _separated_ from things like that. It can drive you crazy sometimes, that's what my uncle told me. He actually fought King Cobra once and got tainted. He went out of his head and spent a month at a psychiatric hospital."

"Like me and cold," I said, suddenly getting it. Somehow Ethan had ended up going up against guy that could hit him at his weakest point. His first big battle, being under a ton of stress, having had plenty of time to think about it and agonize it over in his mind, and then having to target someone like that… It would have been like putting me up against Melissa Frost during a blizzard.

"Yeah, just like that," Ethan said quietly, and then sighed. "I didn't even remember the stun-ray until Warren told me. I could have just taken Viper down from a distance, but-."

"So next time do that," Magenta pointed out.

"Make me lead," he said, bringing his head up. Magenta looked at him oddly. "Seriously, make me go first next time and then you can remind me. I don't want to let you or anyone else down again."

Magenta looked at him sympathetically. "As long as you promise the same thing if I ever get panicked. Deal?"

"Deal," Ethan said firmly. "I'm sorry, it's just… It was my first real assignment, I messed up, you got hurt, my _parents_ saw it, and-."

"Ethan," Will cut him off. "Seriously, no one here is mad at you."

"Umm…" Ethan raised an eyebrow as everyone nodded at Will's words.

"Relax Popsicle," I added. "You weren't the only one that froze in that fight."

Ethan winced with embarrassment. "Yeah… all right," he said, nodding with more conviction.

"So Warren, did you talk to Nurse Spex?" he asked after a second. I groaned in embarrassment. _They are never going to let me live this morning down. Ever_.

"Yes, yes I did, it wasn't anything serious," I said reluctantly. Everyone looked at me expectantly. "Shock, she said it sounded like shock. Because of the fight and the cold weather, ok? I just have to keep myself warm for the next few days and I'll be fine."

"Hey, I just thought of something… If cold or thin air are basically your weaknesses, what about when Will hit you with the fire extinguisher last year?" Ethan asked. I glared at him darkly.

"And after this we're going to be off the subject of me for the rest of the night," I threatened. Talking with Mom had given me a little emotional equilibrium back, but I did not want to be the only one talking. Ok, sure, I probably had the most to talk about, but I wasn't going to let the rest of them off the hook.

"Sure thing. We'll make someone else go next," Ethan said, a hint of humor on his face.

"It was just carbon dioxide; it smothers the flames on the surface. It stopped me from powering up for a few seconds, but once I brushed it off I was fine, power-wise," I explained. "And… it wasn't the first time I've been hit with one," I added quickly.

Layla smiled suddenly. "Your mom kept one around the house, right?" I sighed.

"Yeah, I had bad dreams a couple of times and set my room on fire. What, your mom had to keep weed-killer around?" I asked. Layla looked horrified.

"And _kill_ the plants? No, no, no, it was branch cutters and twine," she explained.

"Kinky," Will said mischievously, and the rest of us started laughing while Layla turned bright red. She leaned back over the log bench to scoop up a bit of snow and drop it on Will's head in revenge, and he yelled as he tried to get the cold stuff off before it could melt.

Layla started laughing too, and we couldn't even stop for the next few minutes. Every time someone looked at someone else, we just lost it, and it must have been almost five minutes before we had calmed down enough to talk coherently again.

"So," I said, resolutely smothering the rest of my laughter, "My turn. Layla, what's your thing?"

"Uh…'thing?'" she asked, trying not to laugh again.

"For me it's cold or thin air, Ethan it's chemicals or unexpected temperature changes, Magenta it's being stepped on while shifted…" I elaborated. Sure, we had gone over a little of this in class, but there was a difference between a class project and real life. Ethan hadn't mentioned his fear of being "tainted" in class, and it ended up seriously affecting him in a fight.

"Oh, that thing. Umm… not being around plants basically," she said with a shrug. "I didn't figure it out for a while; Mom couldn't understand why I would always get sick when we visited my dad in one of the high rises downtown."

"Not bad… and you're keeping plants with you all the time now, right?" I asked. Layla pulled back her jacket sleeve to reveal an ivy bracelet.

"Zack?" I asked next, and everyone turned to look at him. He just shrugged.

"Dunno dude. Once I powered up I never really noticed anything that made me, ya know, get weird. My sisters are the same… well, Emily sometimes gets a little tired if she tries to charge up too many things at once, but other than that… dunno," he said casually. "Worst I ever felt was a couple nights ago when I was helping you with Magenta."

"She was really bad… I must have been leeching a lot of energy out of you," I offered, staring into the flames again. Then I took a deep breath and asked a more difficult question. "What's it like on your end? Getting healed, I mean?"

I had never really asked them about it, not wanting to talk about it… but if I was ever going to do it, I think it was going to have to be now. The others straightened up a little, paying more attention. I don't think I had volunteered any questions about my healing power since the day I had discovered it, not even when Ethan had been trying to make a training program for me.

"I don't remember a lot," Zack said. "When I woke up I was just kinda tired and had a headache. And I was really warm… um… That's about it."

"I remember a little more. I was at least half-awake during it," Magenta said. "I was just feeling very drained and cold and sick… Then… It was like I was on fire but it stopped just before it got to the point where it would hurt. The fire was… driving out the cold… until I felt all right again. And it smelled like ginger," she added.

"Ginger," I repeated the last, blinking at her.

"I was shifted! Things smell stronger when I'm shifted, and it smelled like ginger!" she said defiantly, crossing her arms over her chest, daring me to contradict her.

"Ok, ok, ginger, sure," I said quickly.

"All right, so what's it like on _your_ end?" Magenta shot back. I thought about reminding her about the temporary ban on me talking, and then realized she wouldn't care to hear any excuses.

"I don't remember a lot from healing Zack… but after that… It's like I see someone that's hurt as a flame, in my mind. The flame is shadowed… and I try to feed the flame so it burns away the shadow. Does that make sense?" I tried to explain. Layla nodded.

"I get it; it sounds like when I help out a sick plant. Except I see it like a vine of green light," she said, smiling. Belatedly I realized that I was a member of two power-families now, and Layla's own botanypathy were probably the closest I was going to get to my own healing powers within our group.

"Very cool," Ethan said, and I heard a faint scratching sound. Ethan was busy scribbling away in a notebook, squinting in the firelight.

"You're going to go blind," Will warned, then shut up when Zack powered up politely. "Never mind."

"Ok, Stronghold, you're last. Anything we need to know about?" I asked.

"Umm… I don't think so. Dad doesn't have that much in the way of weaknesses, and anything that Mom had to worry about Dad doesn't, not really," Will said with a shrug.

"But not mental powers," I added, and was pretty sure Will flushed. I wasn't trying to be cruel, but I could guess that Will's powers and virtual invulnerability would end up with him thinking himself untouchable. Or they would have, had he not gotten tagged by Bloodtalon.

"Yeah… those work just fine," he said quietly, but I could tell he was angry about it.

"I had to say it Stronghold. Those work on everyone, even you," I pointed out. Will sighed and nodded in agreement.

Silence closed in around us again, and I looked up around the circle after a minute.

"Layla… what happened with Skybolt?" I asked her. I was starting to get the rest of my emotional strength back, and the others were a lot more talkative in the dark. The irony of me having to confess in the light and them in the dark did not escape me… but I doubt the rest of would have appreciated it. If had still been writing bad gothic poetry I could have gotten a small book out of this.

"I was just trying to keep Will from getting hurt. I… overreacted," she said softly.

"I don't think lightning would have hurt me-," Will started to say.

"Yes it would have," I said flatly. "When I talked to your dad about mine, he said fire still hurt him, even though it couldn't kill him. I don't think lightning would have been that much different." Will went wide-eyed at this. _I guess he's never heard the details of that fight…_

"Oh," Will said faintly.

"Skybolt just kept calling down more and more lightning, and I kept getting madder and madder at him because you were still up there Will. And he was killing so many plants… I didn't even know how tired I was until he stopped powering up," she explained. "I had never done that before. I didn't know I could move that much at once. And then after it just… all ran out of me, like I was empty."

"Are you ok now?" Will asked, and Layla smiled.

"I'm fine, really. Just being _here_ makes a big difference. I can feel the whole forest…" she said, gesturing and growing a little pine seedling to knee-height next to her.

"I'd say that's crazy tree-hugger talk, but I know you're not crazy," I laughed. Layla contrived to look offended and put her nose in the air.

"So… I think I'm the last one, right?" Zack said after a second. _At least he bit the bullet and asked himself,_ I thought with satisfaction.

"Why didn't you hear me on the com saying Cutter and Painbreaker were coming out?" I asked him the expected question.

"'Cause I just didn't. I was focusing on Viper, and then on Magenta. I wasn't hearing anything," he said simply and shrugged. Concentration is a funny thing. I knew Ethan could calmly read a book while sitting in a crowded lunchroom and have full comprehension of it afterward, but not remember a thing of what was said at lunch. Heck, I had apparently healed Magenta while Will actually crashed through the roof, and totally not noticed the hole in the ceiling until someone told me later.

"C'est la vie," Magenta said with an answering shrug. "It all turned out ok, so it's all good."

"Yeah…" Will said. "Yeah, all good." I smiled into the fire.

"You guys aren't bad at this," I offered.

"Well, I don't think we had a choice after this morning," Magenta pointed out. "We'd look selfish if we tried to clam up."

"And I would have totally guilt-tripped you all," I threatened. "Or gotten my mom to."

"Dude, not cool!" Zack said, laughing. The evening broke up on much more of a high note as we finally got up to go to sleep. I, however, was going sleep at the hot springs.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right out there alone?" Layla asked me when I bundled up my pack for the short trip.

"I'm indestructible. And fireproof. And if I don't sleep warm I'm going to be worse off, so yeah, I'll be fine. Send Stronghold to make sure I don't accidentally roll in and drown myself if you're worried," I countered. "I won't want a repeat of this morning."

"I dunno, Magenta said-"

"Don't want to hear about it!" I cut in quickly. Layla giggled a bit.

"Ok, ok, I'll just send Will to check on you," she said with a determined air. I gave a long-suffering sigh.

"Good _night_ everybody!" I shouted over my shoulder as I marched out. I heard some vague replies behind me, but the forest soon swallowed them up. Was it only this morning I had been out here? It felt like a week, so much had happened.

I bedded down on the warm ground next to a pool, the heat soaking up through the stone making it by far the most comfortable bed I'd seen in two days. The pool itself not withstanding, of course.

* * *

"Warren?" I heard someone calling me, and slowly tried to get my brain to work. I cautiously opened one eye a slit. _Sky. Sky… CRAP!_ My brain came awake all at once as I quickly took stock. I was relieved to find that although I wasn't in a tent, I was still fully clothed _and_ in my sleeping bag. And exactly where I was when I went to sleep last night. _Whew, I wasn't up for that kind of embarrassment two days in a row…_

I pushed myself up and saw Will coming down from the sky right next to me.

"Too early Stronghold," I warned him as I struggled to get my boots on.

"Yeah, I know, but we have a little problem…"

" _Little_ problem? We don't have little problems; we're heroes, all of our problems come in jumbo-sizes," I countered.

"Well… I was taking Layla up to see the sunrise this morning, and um… I noticed there was someone on the trail a few miles behind us. Citizens," he clarified.

"Citizens. And they're going to be coming our way?" I asked, boots starting to go on at light speed.

"Might be. I thought I'd try to get you back here before they arrive, just in case."

"This is ridiculous. Privacy my ass. First Bruin, then this," I snapped, rolling up the rest of my gear and stuffing it into my pack. Will shrugged philosophically.

"We can be normal for a few hours, right? I mean, just until they leave."

"Sure, just fly me back to camp before they get there," I said with a hint of sarcasm. Will doubled over laughing while I finished buckling the backpack. He got himself under control enough to carefully pick me up under the arms and fly back, the forest flashing by in patches of steam, fog, sunlight, and pine trees. Will had flown me once or twice in the Gauntlet, but it was still surprising to realize that I was no more than a feather to him.

When we touched down, the rest of the guys were out of their tents already, looking remarkably awake for it being barely past dawn.

"So, do we have a game plan?" Will asked, looking all business.

"Be normal?" Ethan suggested weakly, and Will started laughing again.

 _Oh this is going to be good,_ I thought. _Wait, no, not really._


	16. Being Normal

 

Acting normal sounds easy, right? I mean, we do it every day. Sure, we live in a neighborhood where there's a high concentration of super-people. Sure we go to Sky High. But we went to normal schools for at least thirteen years. I had a _job_ amongst normal people. But we had also spent a _very_ intense week using our powers, being superheroes, and dealing with the consequences. If there was a greater recipe for a slip, I didn't know it.

"There're a couple of hours away at best," Will was saying. "I'm going to go ditch the car somewhere. Layla, will you help me hide it?"

"What, a car-shaped pile of leaves isn't going to be obvious?" Magenta asked.

"What's better, a car-shaped pile of leaves that's _here_ or three miles from here?" Will shot back, and Magenta laughed, conceding defeat. Layla climbed in the car and Will took off with it, getting completely out of sight within seconds.

"Oh frell," Ethan said suddenly, looking along the trail with concern, "We don't have a camping permit. I hope this isn't their assigned campsite…"

"If it is, we'll say we just used it to start a fire," I countered. "Seriously, you picked out this corner of the park in the first place because it was remote, right?"

"Yeah… So it means they might get suspicious if we-" Ethan started to protest.

"Dude, you're getting paranoid!" Zack said with a grin. "Come on, let's go get more firewood."

"I think we're using it all up, what with Warren making bonfires and all," Magenta pointed out, but came with the rest of us anyway.

"I have a medical excuse," I grumped. So sure, we had to hike a little farther for firewood because I wasn't letting the fire out for any reason, but it wasn't like we weren't all fit.

"Uh huh. So _that's_ what they're calling it these days…"

"Die!" I snarled, and made a mock-lunge. Magenta started laughing her head off as she ran away, circling around Zack and Ethan to keep me at bay. _Those_ two were laughing so hard they couldn't even walk; only hold each other up as Magenta and I circled them.

"Aww… Poor widdle Warren can't even get the guinea pig girl?" she taunted as she ducked out of my grasp again.

"You're going down!" I shot back, and head-faked to the left, then snapped right to grab her arm. Ethan abruptly melted right next to me, and I completely lost my footing, slipping and landing flat on my back, knocking the wind out of me. _Oh, that's graceful, hero,_ my brain laughed. _Slapstick comedy at six a.m._

"Dude… you ok?" Zack asked, looming over me.

"Not… fair…" I got out after a second, pointing to a resolidified Ethan with a wavering hand.

"Totally fair," Ethan corrected, helping me up. "You're taller than she is. I evened out the field."

"You evened out my head," I corrected, rubbing it. Ethan didn't look at all repentant.

"You're indestructible," he pointed out with a smile.

"Shut up," I said, trying to keep a scowl on my face.

"Besides, now nothing worse can happen for the rest of the day."

"I said shut up." I was starting to smile in spite of myself. I swear these guys got weirder every day. It was one of their more endearing traits.

"Hey there's some firewood!" Zack called back to us, starting to pick up some fallen branches. We spent a half-hour collecting firewood and good-naturedly insulting each other. It was a definite improvement over yesterday morning, and Magenta was in fine form, scoring more of the elusive, intangible cool points than the rest of us put together.

"How are you so… awake in the morning?" I demanded.

"Unnaturally active metabolism. It comes from being a shapeshifter. And guinea pigs are diurnal," she said. "That means awake during the day." She added the last to Zack before he could ask.

"Hmm… I don't know about that. I seem to remember seeing you asleep the other morning, before we left school," I said casually, starting to smile evilly. Maybe I didn't have pictures, but I was still going to get my revenge…

"What are you talking about?" Magenta demanded.

"I was thinking you were already up, but then I saw Zack was still asleep and he was holding something, a purple guinea pig…" I trailed off when I noticed Magenta turning some spectacular colors.

"You- you-," she sputtered, while Zack seemed to be torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to support his girlfriend.

"My point," I said, making a tally mark in the air.

"Fine!" she exploded, looking equally torn between being mad and amused.

"Hey, _this_ is token payment for yesterday," I said a little more seriously. She finally sighed in agreement. But I still had to carry most of the firewood.

* * *

Will and Layla must have been gone for almost two hours, and we were starting to get a little worried. Granted, it does take a while to hike even a few miles, particularly over a rough trail, in cold weather, and being burdened with heavy packs, but those two were cutting it awfully close.

To our relief, at least they touched back down before the citizens arrived. Will's jacket was stained a bit with mud, and both of their shoes were covered in it.

"Did you forget how to fly?" I demanded when they grounded themselves.

"Uh nope. We were laying a trail," Will said, trying to flick the mud off his sleeves.

"Say what?" Zack asked.

"There's no evidence of us coming in the trail _that_ way," Layla said, pointing in the direction of the alleged citizens. "So we made sure the trail the _other_ way looked like we had used it. Because they'll probably ask us about trail conditions, as we have to look like we hiked in here."

"Good thinking," Ethan said with approval.

"I thought of it because of this summer. That happened a lot when Mom and I were camping in the parks around the state," Layla explained.

"You're a genius, hippie. Stronghold, where _are_ these people?" I asked.

"Ho the camp!" Our heads snapped up as our promised citizens came tramping up the trail in the opposite direction. _Damn, that was almost too close._

There were only four of them, about my age or a little older, maybe high school seniors or college freshman. There were two that looked like brother and sister, tall and slender even under the bulky jackets and backpacks, both dark skinned black with the same high cheekbones and large eyes. The other guy was as about as opposite as you could get, short, stocky, milk-pale skin and violently red hair. The last was a taller, heavyset girl with curly brown hair she was trying to stuff under her hat, annoyance on her face.

"Ho the trail! Good morning!" Layla called back cheerfully.

"I don't suppose you'd let some half-frozen hikers thaw out a bit, would you?" the red-haired guy asked, closing in so he wouldn't have to yell.

"Sure, sit down," Layla said politely, waving to the benches. We all crowded over a bit, and they unbuckled their backpacks and gratefully collapsed on the logs.

"Brrr…" the brown-haired girl shivered, holding her hands near the fire. "Don, you think we have enough time for cocoa before we go?"

"I think so. Er, you mind if we use your fire? We have our own supplies," the redhead, Don, asked. Layla shrugged and gestured for them to go ahead. Within two seconds flat the last girl had water starting to boil, and she glared at it furiously, as if she were willing it to get hot faster.

"So, you guys going very far today?" Layla asked after a few seconds of silence.

"Yeah, Mr. Genius over here picked the farthest possible campsite from last night's," she groused, but there was a hint of humor in her face.

"But I've been there before, and it's a really nice one!" Don protested.

"And it's _how_ many miles away?"

"Only six."

"Only six he says! Through a very cold forest, through _snow_ , and over a very rough trail says I!"

"You're just grumpy because you didn't get a hot breakfast."

"And that's why we're stopping at the fire of these _very_ kind and accommodating people, who don't even know our names yet, Don," she shot back.

"Oh yeah, right. I'm Don, that's Rachel, and those two are Chloe and Chad. They're twins."

"Dude, do you have to tell everyone that?" Chad said, laughing a bit.

"I do because everyone always asks you, and you said you were tired of explaining it," Don said with impeccable logic, a broad grin on his face.

"Who put you in such a good mood? Shouldn't you have a hangover anyway?" Rachel asked.

The rest of us were just having a fun time watching these guys bicker back and forth. It was like watching us, but on the outside.

"Nah, I'm Irish, I was like born three drinks from sober. Besides, I couldn't take the Jagermeister on the trail because it was in a glass bottle, I couldn't leave it in the car because a bear might try to get it, and I wasn't going to throw it away because it was expensive. So I _had_ to drink it!" Don said with triumphant logic.

"Yeah, take it from me, never let this guy pick your trail when he's smashed," Rachel quipped.

"I don't suppose you guys would mind if we killed him and left his body here, would you?" Chad asked plaintively.

"It might smell after a while," Magenta said reasonably. "Besides, you pack it in, you pack it out."

"Hey!" Don protested.

"Damn. Well, it was worth a shot. So, what're your names?" Chad inquired.

"I'm Layla, and this is Will, Warren, Ethan, Zack, and Magenta," Layla said, pointing at each of us.

"Magenta? That a nickname?" Don asked.

"Nope. Mom lost a bet with her sister when they were picking out my name."

"Harsh, dudette," Chad said with a sympathetic grimace.

"Not really. Could you imagine me as Evangeline? That's what Mom originally had picked out," Magenta said with a smile. The other four looked at each other for a second.

"Magenta," they said all at once, nodding firmly, and the rest of us laughed at that.

" _Evangeline?_ " Zack whispered to her incredulously.

"So, where you guys from?" Don asked.

"Maxville," Will said proudly.

"Yeah? You on break? Or just playing hooky?" he asked, smiling.

"We're on vacation," Ethan said a little defensively.

"Nice. I wish the parents would have let us run around out here alone when I was in high school," Chad said, smiling.

"Warren's our chaperone," Magenta added with a perfectly straight face, though her eyes were dancing with humor. The four of them looked from my leather jacket back to Will and Layla… and burst out laughing.

"Man… I'm sorry dude, I'm sure you're a nice guy, but it looks like they dragged you out of a biker bar," Chad said, nearly doubled over. Chloe slapped him on the back a few times to get him breathing again. I was trying to not laugh, but it was pretty hard, and eventually I unbent enough to snicker at the idea. When you looked at the six of us, I was the one that stood out like a sore thumb, and it wasn't just because I was older.

"You totally should get a motorcycle Warren, that'd be bad-ass!" Zack said.

"Yeah, with my luck I'd end up crashing it and blowing it up the first day," I shot back; trying to remind him of the reason I didn't drive. Though the mental image was undeniably cool.

"Yeah, you'd look like Ghost Rider, wicked!" he said, nodding absently and clearly not even playing attention.

"Complete with the flaming skull after I crashed, Glowstick," I snapped, glaring at him to drop it.

"So hey, you guys follow the super news?" Chad asked.

"Who doesn't?" Will responded, and Zack snickered.

"Anyone play… Champion Debate?" he asked.

"Do you have to ask _every random person_ if they play?" Don demanded. Chad nodded without remorse.

Champion Debate was one of those things that kind of grew up in the media storm around superheroes. I mean, people can photograph and interview actors, singers, and athletes to their hearts' content, but since superheroes and supervillains don't get formally interviewed, and there's only so much of their lives that are on public display, people started making stuff up.

Champion Debate is where people pit one superperson against another in a purely theoretical sense. Say you have two fanboys arguing over whether Sonic Boom could take on The Screamer and win. Except now they have to bring up specific examples of how their powers have been used in previous battles, not just speculations and gut feelings, and then use all their powers of persuasion to argue each attack, defense, evasion, or trick. It's like two lawyers arguing a point, using other cases as precedent, combined with the strategy of chess, and the skill of a master storyteller, all at the fastest speed possible. It sounds kind of dry, until you see two masters play it.

I was actually fairly relieved they had asked us to play. Champion Debate was like any other big time game show; you knew how to play even if you rarely watched it. Password, Wheel of Fortune, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire, unless you lived under a rock, you couldn't avoid at least knowing the premise. Champion Debate was about a safe a topic as we could get. There were plenty of normal people who probably knew more about superheroes than we did, thanks to that game.

On the TV version of Champion Debate they create the theoretical battles through old news footage and some clever CGI, though people play it anywhere using just their imaginations. People set it up in the park like chess players and debate for cash; there are even clubs in the normal schools alongside regular Speech and Debate. We played plenty of it in Sky High, usually as a review in Superpowered History or Battle Tactics, but Ethan had been on the team since elementary school.

"Ethan!" we all said at once.

"Ethan's got a Master rank," Zack added proudly.

"Sweet! We have a debate, and we got deadlocked last night. Want to break it for us?" he asked.

"Name your champion," Ethan said proudly, standing up.

"Chloe. She's got a Master ranking too," Chad said with a smirk, as his sister stood up. And up. She must have topped Ethan by nearly a foot and a half. She was even taller than Zack, for crying out loud.

"And what's your debate?" Ethan asked, looking up at her.

"A classic. Beat the Commander. Except I want to be the attacker, using Tsunami," she said. Ethan nobly refrained from choking. A popular debate-battle was where one person took the Commander's side, and someone else would try to pick someone to defeat him. Since the Commander was virtually invulnerable and powerful enough to destroy hurtling meteors with a single punch, it took a very clever debater to "defeat" him. Whoever was on the Commander's side usually had an easy victory… unless the attacker had some clever ideas. So either she was insulting Ethan intelligence, or she had a plan. And obviously it was the latter.

Not to mention Tsunami was Ethan's dad.

"Done. Books, brains, or both?" he asked. Sometimes people played just from memory, but if both players had books they could use them to look up information as they went.

"Yeah like anyone would haul that cinderblock out… into… the woods…" Don said, and then trailed off as both dug into their backpacks or tents and hauled out their battered, bookmarked copies of _The Illustrated Lives of Superheroes, 2006 edition_ , the only book allowed in Champion Debate.

"Ok, that was scary," Don said. "Chloe I think you found a kindred spirit. Why did you haul that thing out here?"

"Because I wanted something to read," Ethan and Chloe said simultaneously, and then laughed. Everyone around the campfire looked at them weirdly. _Kindred spirits indeed._

"I play the debate tables in the student union for extra cash, I have to keep my game up," Chloe explained.

"And I'm on the team at school," Ethan pointed out.

"You could have put in an extra sleeping bag in your backpack without that brick in there!" Don protested.

"You're going to get a brick to the head if you don't shut up about it," she said sweetly.

"I'll ref. Lord knows I've done it enough with you practicing…" Chad muttered, and pulled out some paper and a pen from his pack to keep score.

"Anecdotal allowed?" Chloe asked, raising an eyebrow. Anecdotal evidence was only used occasionally, and only if the debater in question had personally witnessed a super-person in action. It was all upheld by the honor system, and people had been barred from professional debates by lying about their experiences.

"You have one?" Ethan asked. He was probably wondering which of _his_ he could get away with…

"For Tsunami, he rescued me in San Diego, March 13th 1999, when Anaconda tried to set loose all the animals at the zoo," she said immediately. "But if you don't mind, I'll save the specifics for the debate."

"You're not a super-junkie, are you?" Zack asked, looking a little pained. Some people basically tried to get themselves into bad situations as often as possible so they could be rescued by superheroes. They looked for supervillains with more enthusiasm than superheroes, just for the thrill of the danger, and for being able to be near their favorite heroes.

"Please," she said, scoffing. "Just wrong place, wrong time. Chad was there too."

"Scared the piss out of me. I don't know how she talks about it," he added, sighing.

"So, you have one too?" she asked Ethan.

"Ah… yes, yes I do. Also for Tsunami," he said with a grin. There was a competitive streak in Ethan that only really came out when it came to academics, and I was guessing whatever he had in mind probably wasn't in any books. _Oh crap, I hope she doesn't call him on it…_

"Ok, Tsunami versus the Commander, books _and_ brains, anecdotal evidence allowed, Tsunami attacks first," Chad said, laying out the final agreed-upon rules. "Debate!"

Chloe opened with Tsunami's wave attack; Ethan countered the Commander's strength of stability, Ethan advanced with a grapple, Chloe riposted with Tsunami's water-form. Names and dates flew thick and fast as each defended their choice, pages blurred as they countered and justified their attacks and defenses, and Chad's fingers fairly flew to keep up the score. They were both pretty good storytellers, and the imaginary epic battle was clear in my head.

Ethan was actually pushing Chloe to get more and more creative on how she was using Tsunami's powers against someone as durable at the Commander, and I wondered if he was taking mental notes to use for both him and his dad. Will was actually looking a little dazed when Ethan started quoting from battles back from before any of us were born. I guessed knowing your dad was a good fighter and hearing someone else confirm it were two different things.

Champion Debate battles don't last terribly long, and by the end of ten minutes, both of them were starting to wind down. Chloe tried to corner Ethan by pulling out her anecdotal evidence, citing that she had actually seen Tsunami half-drown Anaconda with his own transformed body in order to capture him. _Oh… tough to counter drowning since he's not trying to grapple…_ Then Ethan smiled.

"Anecdotal, you've had Tsunami shift nearly two dozen times, maximum number of times for shifting I witnessed on July 4th, 2005 in Maxville was twenty five before power exhaustion set in and he wasn't able to shift anymore. He wouldn't have the energy to hold his shifted form long enough to knock the Commander unconscious, as per my previous argument on how long the Commander can hold his breath," Ethan shot back, actually punching one fist into his open palm in triumph. _Independence Day last year? Wait, wasn't that the day of Ethan's family pool party?_

Chloe opened her mouth, then shut it again, opened it again, and then turned to her brother for a judgment. Chad took a big breath and finished the scoring.

"Ok… wow. That was close. Umm… Tell you what guys, we're at a near draw, but since Tsunami was close but not _at_ twenty-five shifts, I rule the Commander succumbs but Tsunami is power-exhausted right after. Final ruling," he said. "Good game guys. And now I need to uncramp my fingers…"

Chloe and Ethan were laughing and congratulating each other on a good debate, while Chad used his other hand to pry his fingers off of his pen. Don had been watching the whole thing like it was a fascinating game of tennis.

"Dude, you _seriously_ need to consider going on the profession circuit. I've seen Chloe mop the floor with people with this debate like a dozen times," he said with respect. Ethan just shrugged.

"I'm still in high school," he pointed out.

"Even so, you should do it. You're really good. You have your card with you? I want to make this official," Chloe offered, taking out her Champion Debate scorecard. Masters kept their own rankings, which changed each time they debated with another Master. Chad sighed when Ethan pulled out his own, and took them both aside to countersign their cards.

"Yay, it's finally boiling. About friggin' time," Rachel said suddenly, grabbing her mug and wrapping a gloved hand around the water pot on the fire grate. She dumped water and cocoa into her mug, and followed it up with cold water from the water bottle to get it cold enough to drink. A few drinks later and she finally looked less sullen.

"We should really keep those two apart," she added, glancing over at the nerdy trio. "I think my brain was about starting to pour out of my ears there at the end. How can they _memorize_ all that stuff?"

"Depressingly easily," Magenta said, and we nodded in sympathy. Then I noticed Will was still staring off into space. Layla finally elbowed him a bit.

"Earth to Will," she said, and he shook his head, waking himself up.

"Er sorry. I just never really know my- the Commander could do all that stuff," he said.

"Maybe you should be taking notes, Stronghold," I told him, smiling a bit.

"Maybe I'll do that next time, _Peace_ ," he shot back, laughing.

"Wait… your last name is Peace?" Don said, suppressing a smirk.

"Yeah," I said a little sullenly. I knew damn well what my name sounded like. The only reason I hadn't gotten more crap about it when I was younger was that first graders don't read Tolstoy.

"Warren _Peace?_ " he repeated, and started to shake with repressed laughter. "Oh man… dude, I am so sorry. That's just… that's worse than hers…" He pointed to Magenta between snickers, struggling to get a breath. Rachel was starting to laugh too. They weren't really trying to be mean, they wanted me to join in with the joke, but I just couldn't bring myself to even crack a fake smile. The rest of the gang was torn between wanting to laugh politely and trying to get them to stop. It was stupid, I knew it, and my friends knew it, but I just couldn't find anything even remotely funny about this.

"Oh… oh man… oh God… Sorry…" Don said finally, wiping a tear from his eye and getting his laughter back under control. "It's just really funny… Your parents must have really hated you, eh?"

There was a collective "oh shit" expression on my friends' faces, and they all shot me worried looks. I throttled down reflexive anger hard; _it was just a joke, they didn't know, it was just a joke…_ Heat was running along my hands, but I was opposite them, and the fire itself hid the heat-haze coming off of me. I took a deep breath and counted mentally to ten in both languages I knew.

"No, they really didn't," I said calmly, but with such an expression on my face that Don shut up immediately.

"So hey! Look at the time, we better get going or we're going to have to camp in the snow!" Rachel said loudly, not even looking at her watch. She bounded to her feet and started to struggle into her pack, tossing back the rest of her cocoa in one gulp, suppressing a grimace at the heat.

Chad came back just on the tail end of that conversation, and shut his mouth on whatever it was he was going to say.

"Good meeting you guys, and thanks for the debate. Kind funny who you meet out here, eh?" he said with some forced cheer after a second, struggling into his backpack and holding out his hand to shake. I shook off my bad mood and tried to smile a little as we said good-bye. They'd been a pretty nice bunch of guys, all in all. Ethan and Chloe joined us after a couple of minutes, Don quickly asked us about the trail conditions ahead, and pretty soon the four citizens waved us good-bye and were out of sight along a bend in the trail.

We waited in total silence for almost ten minutes _after_ the sounds of their conversation faded.

"Ok, I think they're gone," Magenta said finally, and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

"That wasn't so bad," Will said with a shrug. "Right?"

"I'd save 'em," Zack said, nodding.

"We don't get to pick who to save!" Layla said with her particular brand of righteous indignation.

"I'm just sayin', good to know there are _cool_ people out there to save."

I finally looked over at Ethan, as he had been totally silent. He was wearing a stupefying happy expression and was looking in his _Illustrated Lives of Superheroes_ book with a kind of reverence. I leaned over a bit to see what was so darn interesting. There was a small slip of paper stuck in the page about Tsunami. Just a name and a phone number. Chloe Zell.

"You got her _phone number?"_ I asked incredulously. Ethan only blushed.

* * *

The rest of the week was much, much quieter, for which I think we were all extremely grateful. We actually caught up on sleep for perhaps the first time in two months. We sometimes hiked around the area for fun, and twice Will snuck us out in the car to different areas of the park to do some sightseeing. Principal Powers probably wouldn't have approved, but we were careful. The place was really, amazingly beautiful, and I didn't even need Layla's lectures on the ecological value of this place to appreciate it.

We still talked around the campfire, not with any great urgency, but just as things came to us. Will talked about the pressure on him to fill his father's cape, something he said he was pretty sure he could handle… if his father would ever back off about the "Stronghold Three." Apparently Mr. Stronghold had that bit between his teeth and had been running with it since Will's freshman year. At least Will's mom was being a lot more reasonable about it. It turned out _she_ had been the voice of reason back before Will had his powers.

"Let her handle your dad. Last thing you want is to go up against him yourself," was what I had to say on the subject. Now that my mom was hanging out with Mrs. Stronghold again, she'd be able to help smooth things over a bit. Even if she didn't use her powers, Mom tended to try to fix things just using words.

A couple of times we called our parents back, after we got a text message from Principal Powers warning us to. Mom told me she was having at least a little success with everyone else's parents, and that was borne out by the progressively less guilty faces I saw after each call. By the end of the week Magenta actually got off the phone _laughing_ , and I knew it was safe for us to go home.

Will would have flown us all back to Sky High himself to avoid any possibility of encountering Bruin again, but Principal Powers told us to leave the car where we had picked it up, and the road was a little too crowded to fly it there. We had told her about encountering Bruin; she had been surprised, but had been adamant that we didn't try to take him out of his cover job.

"That could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Leave him be; I'll have him watched," she told us vaguely. Though which back would be broken, I wasn't sure.

It was almost poetic that on our last day, when we were driving out of the park, Bruin was the ranger that came to check us out. He didn't look nearly so afraid this time, but he clearly wasn't comfortable. He simply stood at the driver's side window for a few minute, his hands on the frame, looking at all of us. We stared right back, him playing the part of the dutiful ranger, we playing at being campers.

"I can't believe you stunned me," he said quietly, looking at Magenta. She glared right back at him defiantly. Then he looked past her to Zack. "Though Viper's not going to be able to live down that he got decked in one hit, either." Uncomfortable silence reigned for another few minutes before Will spoke.

"Are you done? Or is this going to get professional?" His tone was… menacing, something I hadn't ever heard from him before, and Bruin actually looked shaken.

"Ah no, no no no," he said, stepping back a half-pace, letting go of the car. He watched us for another moment. "We didn't all want this," he said suddenly, and waved our car past. Will stepped on the gas, and we twisted around to watch our erstwhile archenemy out of the rear windshield.

"'We didn't all want this'?" Layla repeated. "You think he's doing this against his will?"

" _That_ guy?" Zack asked. "Who could make him?"

"Or he could just be messing with our heads," I opined. "Tell Powers, but I don't think he looked too unwilling last week."

"No joke," Magenta muttered. It took us a few minutes to shake off that mood, and Zack finally slipped in a CD to help chase away the last of our unease. They tried to get me to sing along, but I categorically refused, then threatened to melt the CD player.

* * *

We met Ron Wilson finally, ditched the car, and ended up napping on the trip home. For once we were actually going to sleep in our own beds, but we knew that first off we were going to have to have the face-to-face confrontation with our parents, and everyone wanted all their wits about them for that. I was slightly smug; secure in the knowledge that I wasn't going to go through the grilling they were about to. At each house they were met with their parents (or sometimes more, particularly in Ethan's case) on the doorstep, anxious to hug them to the point of suffocation before hauling them inside to talk.

We finally reached my house, the last on the way, and I hopped off, thanking Ron as the doors slid shut. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as the bus pulled away, grateful to be _alone_ for the first time in a seemingly very long time. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy spending time with my friends… but sometimes I _needed_ my solitude. I opened my eyes again, and a strange feeling of wrongness suddenly folded in around me. I looked up at my house; there was a strange car in the driveway… and the front door was slightly open.

I frowned, starting to move up the lawn. Most of my mom's friends lived within walking distance, and I knew the cars of those that didn't. This was a very expensive Jaguar, pricey even for this neighborhood, and that was saying something. I quickened my pace, my heart starting to pound. The front door was ajar, and the latch was actually lying on the ground. There were faint scorch marks around the wood, as if the latch had been heated red-hot and had just popped out. Just inside the door, the inner latch was also on the ground… and there were faint strings of something pink and black stuck to it.

 _Burned skin_ , I knew immediately. Rage flared within me, and I barely had time to kick the door shut before flames erupted along my hands and arms.

" _Mom!"_ I shouted, sick fear tangling with my rage inside me. She had been attacked, someone was here, what had they done to her?

" _I will not play these games any longer Joy!"_ I heard a voice shout faintly, somewhere upstairs. The voice was masculine, deep, with a faint trace of some accent.

" _I am not playing anything!"_ My mother's voice, sounding determined. I pounded upstairs and threw open the door to my mother's office; it was the only closed door. Mom was standing with her back to me, dressed in sweat clothes, her long hair pulled out of her face, her stance confrontational. In front of her was a tall, impeccably dressed man in a dark suit. He bore a shocking resemblance to Baron Battle, though he was far older. His hair was shorter, and liberally sprinkled with gray, but it still had red streaks in it. Most tellingly, a heat-haze was rising from his hands, faintly echoing the flames rising from mine.

I might have been shocked into stopping, if I hadn't seen how badly burned my mother's hands were. The palms and fingers were an angry black and red, and I felt my temperature and rage spike and took a single step forward.

"Warren, _no!"_ Mom said, and reached out to touch me on the back, the only place within easy reach that wasn't on fire. I felt my rage just drain out of me, along with my fire, and I looked at her with shock.

"No, don't hurt him, please," she pleaded.

"He hurt you. I don't give a _damn_ who he is," I growled, snapping my gaze back to cover the man. He was looking… triumphant, almost smug, and if Mom hadn't been suppressing my rage I would have probably set the whole room on fire. He looked like my father when he had been inspecting me for my powers.

"Don't hurt him. There's been a misunderstanding, and I won't let it go on anymore," she said in a fairly calm tone of voice. I saw her lips moving faintly as her brow creased in concentration. _"Take control, channel it down, take control, channel it down…"_ she was saying softly over and over again like a mantra. _She's channeling me… shit!_ I abruptly calmed _myself_ down before I could cause her any more distress. It was both easier and harder for her to use her powers on me, easier because we were related, harder because she tended to _feel_ my emotions just as sharply as her own. And my rage wasn't even easy for _me_ to bear.

With a shudder I let the worst of it go, then turned to the stranger, who had lost a lot of his smugness when he seemed to realize the danger that had just been averted.

"Who is he?" I demanded.

"Warren, this is Tobias Battle," Mom said much more calmly, turning to fix the man with a stare that turned him white.

"Your grandfather."


	17. Family

 

"Warren, this is Tobias Battle," Mom said much more calmly, turning to fix the man with a stare that turned him white.

"Your grandfather."

"So, insanity runs in your family?" I asked, eyes narrowed, giving Tobias a hate-filled glare. He looked decidedly uncomfortable, and all traces of smugness were gone from his expression.

"No. I simply had an urgent need to speak to you Warren," he said. "Joy was insisting you weren't here."

"I wasn't. Obviously. I've been gone for a week. I just got back tonight," I said tersely. I spared a glance at Mom, and gave her a short nod. She took her hand off of my back, and I felt my rage surge back in. Not as out of control as it was before, but more than enough to give heat to both my words and my hands.

"She insisted she didn't know where you were," Tobias said, irritation clear in his voice.

"She didn't," I growled.

"Ah," he said simply, looking unrepentant.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"I had to speak to you on a matter of some importance-." I cut him off, laughing humorlessly. _Who does he think he is?_

"You break into my home, hurt my mom, and now want to talk? Sorry, no, you're going to jail," I said, a kind of unholy calm coming over me. I didn't need to roast this fool; it would be a hell of a lot more humiliating to let him try to explain this to the superhero courts. Tobias was gaping at me like a fish, and I let him sputter incoherently as I turned to Mom. Now that I was calming down, the feeling of wrongness was coming over me again; the ember-fire was trying to get through to help her.

"Mom, let me help," I told her, and held out my hands. I took a few deep breaths and slowly the red fire flickered on my palms. Mom put her hands in mine without hesitation, something that made my breath catch, considering how I had been just a few minutes earlier. I slowly let the flames touch her burned hands, and watched, mesmerized, as the black char and raw flesh healed up before my eyes. I don't think I had ever seen myself heal an open wound before, aside from Penny's half-healed echo-wound, and it was just as fascinating to me as it was to Mom.

"Wow…" I said faintly as Mom gently pulled her hands back, opening and closing them a few times. There wasn't even a scar… _That was very cool,_ I thought idly.

"It's true," Tobias said in a strangled voice. Mom and I turned to him at the same time, fixing him with gimlet stares that practically nailed him to the floor. "You _can_ heal. Warren, you have no idea what this means-"

"Shut it," I snapped. How the hell had he heard about my new power? I guessed it was probably in the Bureau databanks by now, but those weren't exactly common property, even for superheroes. Rumor? But how would it have gotten to Europe? There were only three adults who had seen it work in person, Coach Boomer, Principal Powers, and Nurse Spex. My friends had all seen it, and so had Speed, Penny, and Lash… but who would they have told that would have gotten it all the way over there? My friends' _parents_ had heard about it, I realized, and probably seen the tapes too. Would that be it? Maybe…

"It's _important_ , I _needed_ to speak to you," he said more firmly, starting to get back some of his arrogance.

"You abandoned us Tobias. If you hadn't been so insistent on maintaining your _family reputation_ by burying yourself in your manor and pretending we didn't exist, maybe you would have had a relationship with your grandson. Don't be so surprised," Mom said sharply.

"Be quiet, witch! It was _you_ who drove Baron to those terrible crimes-."

 _He has a death wish,_ I thought very clearly, rage flaring again. This time I wasn't listening to the voice of reason in my head, or my mom's frantic gestures to calm down. She didn't have the chance to use her powers on me this time. My body was moving before my brain could even register the fact that though his words were cruel, he didn't mean what he was saying.

I lunged for him, and saw his expression turn triumphant for a split second. Then he reached out and seemingly grabbed for my wrist with two fingers… Pain suddenly shot through my arm into my entire body, more than enough to floor me, and I collapsed at his feet. _What the hell did he do?_

I looked up weakly, seeing him holding on with a seemingly delicate grip, pressing into pressure points on my wrist with practiced ease. My fire wasn't even hurting him, and I felt remarkably stupid. _How was I supposed to fight someone with my own powers?_ I realized belatedly.

"The nerve clusters in your arms that help conduct your heat can be remarkably sensitive when the right hold is applied. It's a trick we Battles have learned over the centuries to keep order with the younger set. How else do you discipline an unruly child that's both fireproof and indestructible? You can't always count on cold weather," Tobias said calmly. The pig-headed arrogance, the fear, the smugness were all gone from his face; the only thing remaining was a calm assurance. _It had all been an act,_ I realized faintly. I had been too angry to read him right. Mom had said it was all a misunderstanding…

"You… played me," I got out. It had been a trick; he had _wanted_ me to attack him!

"Of course. Even if I had asked politely, you would rather have tortured me slowly to death than give me the time of day," he replied. "I needed to know several things about you, and you've just answered all my questions, Warren. And now I believe I can help you. Will you accept my apology for breaking into your home, harming Joy, and insulting her?"

"No!" I snarled, trying to twist away. He simply increased his grip a tiny bit, and I blanched at the pain.

"Don't be a child. Be a man. Accept that I deceived you, and accept my apology, and we will be able to talk about this as civilized people," he said calmly.

"Let my son go Tobias," Mom said, her voice low and deadly. "You've made your point."

"Very well," he said calmly, and let go. The pain stopped immediately, and I jumped back out of his range. "Will you listen to me now?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked bitterly.

"Yes you do. _My_ powers can hurt him, and he knows it," Mom said with conviction, and a very brief expression of worry crossed Tobias' face. I took heart from that, though was a little disturbed to hear Mom talk about hurting someone with her powers. Make that a lot disturbed. I didn't even know that she _could_ hurt anyone with her powers. I resolved to keep my temper under wraps and try to talk this through. I didn't want to have to find out what she could do when angered…

"Fine, talk," I growled.

"You're in danger," he said simply. "I heard of your new powers, and disturbing rumors began to circulate. I came to see the truth for myself… before someone else could get to you."

"Go on…" I said slowly. _Danger? I can't possibly be in any more danger than he is right now_.

"Do you realize how many super-people have healing powers? Less than a dozen, and all of them many orders of magnitude weaker than you. All of them are Sidekicks at best, able to ease a headache or sore feet, but nothing much worse. A healer of _your_ strength hasn't been seen in over a hundred years. And the manifestation of your power has _never_ been seen before. Healers tend to be psychics; your mother's family spawned the last one, coincidentally enough. A pyrokinetic healer has no precedent, and the fact that others can bolster you makes you very strong. And someone of your strength, able to heal wounds, poisons, disease-."

"I don't even know if I can do all of that," I protested. I was starting to get an inkling of where he was going with this, and unease settled over me.

"I'd be very surprised if you couldn't, you just haven't had an opportunity to try. What I wish to say is that your very strength as a healer makes you a valuable commodity. You may begin to get requests from people wanting to be healed. Some will be demands. A few will be threats," he explained.

"Oh fuck," I said softly, my heart dropping to my shoes. Though my mother's powers and skills were somewhat in demand, people didn't always request her. She was usually assigned somewhere by the Bureau instead, because few people wanted to purposefully face their inner demons. But my own powers… People wouldn't hesitate when it was something as simple and immediate as their own physical health. Like how doctors were sometimes kidnapped in war zones…

"You see your problem," he said calmly.

"And what the hell was the point of you coming here and doing what you did?" I demanded.

"The rumors were so garbled and contradictory that it was needful for me to see your powers in action with my own eyes. I also wished to see what would be necessary to break you," he said.

"You purposefully… burned my mom… so you could watch me heal her? And you provoked me… so…" I got out between surges of rage so intense I couldn't even speak. Fire flared and died and flared again on my hands and arms, echoing my temper.

"So I could see, and you could see, what the unscrupulous will do to control you. A single injury, a few insults, unforgivable though they may be, had your temper to the point where you simply weren't thinking anymore. In that instant, I, an old man, had you helpless at my feet. Even if I had been entirely powerless, I could have subdued you. Even if I had not known that particular pressure point, there are other ways you could have been taken down. Power-neutralizer shackles, ice powers, force fields, or any number of unpleasant things. I'm certain you can use your imagination," he said matter-of-factly.

I felt like I had just been hit the face with a bucket of ice water, the shock was so intense. _Oh my God…_ _What if it_ had _been…?_

"You have no reason to trust me, and any simple warning I would have offered, you would have discarded. I judged this to be shocking enough that you _could not_ ignore me. And if you hate me for my actions, then at least I have lost no love in doing this. Expediency rules me, rather than ethics, I'm afraid," Tobias said with a kind of odd pride.

"This is more than unforgivable, no matter your intentions, Tobias," my mother said, stepping in front of him. "You could have found a better way."

"You know I have my reasons, Joy. That was why you stopped Warren from attacking me the first time," he said, looking down at her.

"What reason could possibly justify hurting her? That's insane!" I yelled.

"It was absolutely essential that I see your powers work with my own eyes. I have ample reason to mistrust videos; they are very easily manipulated. What would you have suggested I do? I could not afford to wait until a situation cropped up naturally. I could not harm myself; I'm unable. I'm as indestructible as you are. If I had harmed a citizen, you would not have forgiven me. If I had harmed one of your friends, you would have killed me. I risked a great deal, but I hoped that your mother, with her great heart and ability to read my true intentions, would forgive me the pain I caused her and you in order to learn what I must," he explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Mom?" I asked, turning to look at her. Her eyes were closed, and she had one hand stretched out to Tobias, reading him.

"He's telling the truth. I forgive you for what you did, Tobias. But you'll have to earn my son's forgiveness on your own," she said quietly, taking a few steps back.

"Why was it so damn important to see my healing first hand?" I asked.

"So when I return home I can begin to spread my own rumors in return. My hand was forced in trying to reach you in time," he explained.

"By who?" I asked sharply. Considering what Principal Powers and I had discussed last week, the phrase caught my attention.

"There were many rumors of your healing powers, but one of them caught my attention because of the source. In a roundabout fashion, I heard it from a known supervillain. We need to do damage control on this before what I warned you about becomes reality. Will you listen to my advice?" he asked.

"I'll listen," I growled.

"But you won't take it if it proves to be foolish. Very well, hear what you will. Find those that have seen you heal and swear them to secrecy. We cannot suppress this now, but at least we can keep this from getting any worse. Contact the Bureau and get them to put several more layers of security clearance on your new power. I would also suggest getting a cover job in the medical field. At least there if you slip you can attempt to pass it off as skill and training rather than a power," he said.

"I've thought of some of that," I said a little defensively. _Thought of it, but didn't_ do _anything about it_ , I added mentally.

"But now is the time to act. I will return home and spread my own rumors to counteract the wild stories flying around. I would suggest keeping up the rather… sinister demeanor you've cultivated. If people are afraid of you, they'll be less likely to try something stupid."

"I don't _want_ people to be afraid of me anymore." That popped out of my mouth without any conscious thought. I think I actually startled myself, thought I saw my mom nodding a little, giving me an encouraging smile.

"Laudable. Unfortunately we can't afford it right now. This is one case where my son's insanity and past actions will actually do us some good. All people have to do is remember what happened at the World Diplomatic Summit, then imagining that happening to themselves if they try to force you into anything," he pointed out.

"I don't want to remind them of that, either," I said forcefully. I could see where he was going, but the _last_ thing I wanted to do was to make people remember what my dad had done.

"Then simply remain menacing, as you have been. People will fill in the blanks. Once I tell them what I've seen with my own eyes, perhaps they'll be less likely to try to get at you," he conceded.

"And what," I growled, "are you going to tell them you've seen?"

"That your powers only work on those that you care for. And anyone trying to _make_ you heal someone is going to die a very nasty fiery death," he said.

"How do you figure that?" I asked.

"Elementary. Your powers work with your feelings; I've been watching you flare up as you get angry with me. I could easily imagine the consequences of trying to get you to heal under coercive conditions. Now that I've seen it, no one can accuse me of lying when I say it. It's the curse of dealing with super-people; you tend to run into mind-readers. But with the rest of the family standing with me, our reputation of loyalty will assist in counteracting the wild tales," he explained.

"What I don't understand is why you're risking your precious family reputation to help us when you cut us off when Baron was jailed," Mom demanded.

"When Baron was incarcerated, you fell under suspicion, Joy. My employers, every single one of them, informed me in no uncertain terms that I had to sever all ties to 'suspicious individuals,' or risk losing all of my contracts. Because my family had a pressing need to eat sometime in the coming year, I acquiesced to their requests. I preserved my family at the cost of my daughter-in-law and grandson, something I've regretted for a very long time," he said slowly, as if each word was painful.

"If you weren't mercenaries you could have just told them where to stick it when they handed you an ultimatum like that," I pointed out.

"We're heroes for hire; there's a difference," Tobias replied.

"Yeah, you fight for justice _after_ you get paid," I shot back.

"Don't be so self-righteous. Who do you think pays your mother's salary? The Bureau. And where does the Bureau's money come from? The taxes of your ordinary citizens. The people of this country pay you for your services, just like a policeman or soldier. We're simply a more direct seller of our services than your own government," he snapped. I had no response to that revelation; the sordid details of the Bureau generally didn't get discussed in class. Tobias sighed and pressed on.

"I am coming to you now because I have just passed the leadership of the family, and thusly the names that the contracts are in, to my oldest son Reginald. Because I am no longer in an official position of power, I can now tell my _former_ employers exactly where they may 'stick' their prejudicial requests," he said coolly.

"And what about Baron?" Mom asked.

"Baron… was not the first superhero to go insane. It's a risk we all take, living the way we do, using the power that we have, both physical and temporal. What made his break from reality so unacceptably tragic to most people is that he was married to perhaps the one person who should have been able to stop it… or so everything thought. I am not accusing you Joy. When Baron wanted something, he didn't let anything stand in his way, particularly reason.

"I disowned him and buried him in my heart the day he was imprisoned. There was no need to follow him into madness by raging against things I could not change. It was my greatest regret that I could not stand with you both after he was gone," he said softly.

I closed my eyes for a second, trying to take all that in. This was _far_ more than I had ever learned in my research in class, more than I ever wanted to know about my dad's family. Tobias was just as smooth and manipulative as my father, though I could see he was using it far differently. I didn't know if it was different enough to stop being mad at him though. Fire was still flickering just below my skin; I could feel it, residual anger from his high-handed actions and assumptions.

"So… you're doing this; giving advice, burning people, spreading rumors, just out of the goodness of your heart?" I asked him a little sarcastically.

"You're of my blood. I take family ties very seriously, and do nothing regarding them lightly," he replied evenly, not taking the bait. "Cutting Baron, Joy, and you out of my life was very hard."

"You're still a manipulative bastard," I snarled.

"I rather expected you to hate me for doing this," he said calmly.

"I don't hate you. I don't like you either, but I don't hate you," I told him, and he actually started at that. "What you wanted to tell me… was important. But your presentation sucks and your reasoning bites."

"I didn't have the time for diplomatic maneuvering, Warren," he warned.

"It doesn't make it any better. Give me a reason why I shouldn't call the Bureau and have you arrested." He actually looked shocked at that. "Seriously. I don't care if you came here to deliver the secret to defeating the Overlord; you aren't going to get out of this without consequences. Your ends don't justify your means."

"I should have expected this from the Peacemaker's son," he muttered half to himself. He then raised his voice again. "If I'm imprisoned, I can't go back and spy for you. I can determine where the leaks are, pinpoint the source of the rumors, and identify those specific individuals that would have tried to force you into their service."

"You're trying to bargain with me?" I asked sternly.

"Of course. I have a great deal to offer. My freedom for yours. The resources of our family will be bent to this task. Consider it a pittance against my actions of eighteen years ago," he countered.

Mom stepped up next to me, and nodded to me with approval.

"A pittance is right, Tobias. And you have a great deal of work to do to make up for your abandonment. I'd rather have you out there, working for us, than in prison," she said.

"Then you accept my offer?" he asked. I nodded with reluctance. I knew the Battle family was old and deeply entrenched in the European superhuman community. And Tobias was hip-deep in the politics of that community; he had to be to negotiate his contracts. He _was_ probably the best person to find out who was spreading rumors.

"Yes. With one condition, you show me that hold you used on me," I said in a very controlled tone. I had a little something in mind for my grandfather. Something to show him we weren't just to be manipulated on his whims, no matter the reason…

"It's generally only taught to the matriarchs and patriarchs of the family, but I rather doubt you'll ever be facing us across a battlefield," he said a little reluctantly, and gestured for me to come over. I pushed back my sleeve, and he carefully showed me the places the nerves ran closest to the skin. He did raise an eyebrow at my tattoos, but the glare I gave him just dared him to make a comment, so he wisely said nothing.

I tried a few times on myself, hissing in pain when I finally got the hold right. _Damn that hurt_. It wasn't much more than a very light pinch; but the placement was so specific that I no longer wondered why I hadn't accidentally done it to myself before. Then I tried on him, finally hitting it on the third try, because Tobias went stiff with pain. I bore down a little, watching him begin to crumple, and I heard my mom give a little gasp behind me.

"Now you listen to me," I said in a very deadly tone. "The next time you need to tell us something, you are going to use the goddamn phone. No more dramatic set-ups, no more shocking injuries, no more big speeches. And if you _ever_ hurt my mom again, I will make you pay for it."

I let go of him and took a few steps back. Tobias took a few minutes to get his breath and his wits back, finally rising off the floor and looking at me with respect.

"I see. I do believe I see," he said softly, looking over my shoulder at my mom. "As you will then. The next time you hear from me, it will be in a more… conventional fashion. I'll show myself out."

Tobias gave us a short bow and left, and in a few minutes, we heard his car pull out of the driveway. I put my back to the wall, my knees suddenly weak with reaction. Mom simply dropped where she was, sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring at the rug with detached fascination.

"Holy fuck," I said finally.

"Indeed," Mom said absently. It was another five minutes before either of us could talk in a coherent fashion.

"How the hell did he get in?" I asked.

"He knocked on the door. I saw who it was through the window, and I could feel that he was up to something… intense. Desperate, but he felt it was necessary, and I knew it was going to cause us both pain. But there was no malicious intent in him. He wanted to come in, and I didn't want to let him until _you_ were here. So I held onto the doorknob just out of habit, it _was_ locked, but then he started to heat it up. I was burned before I could even let go of the latch, and then it popped out. He strode in, and we began arguing about where you were. And then you walked in on the end of it," she explained, rubbing her hands absently.

"Was he always like that?" I asked.

"When Baron and I first married… he was very good to me. All of Baron's family was very good to me. They thought I was a good influence on him. Your grandmother Elizabeth even let me wear some of the Battle family's traditional bridal jewelry in my wedding… But yes, Tobias has always been rather convinced that the ends justify the means. He's actually better now, I think," she said.

" _Better_ now? Good grief," I muttered.

"Why do you think I was considered a good influence?" she pointed out, and I nodded reluctantly.

"And he was telling the truth," I said, making it a statement rather than a question. Mom nodded again.

"And he's scared to death because of it. Lord, using Baron's crimes as a _weapon_ … I wanted to hit him when he said that," she sighed. "You did wonderfully, Warren. I know he isn't an easy man to stand up to."

"He should have known better than to think he was going to get anything reasonable out of me after hurting you," I shot back.

"There is that. He was very right about your healing power though. My great-great-grandmother was the last strong healer, and she died when she was only forty. People used her; they used her up. And she had too great of a heart to refuse any request, even if it killed her. And finally it did." Mom finally got up and I pushed myself away from the wall.

"I won't let them," I promised her, giving her a hard hug. I could see there were tears in her eyes, and I grabbed a tissue from the desk to wipe them away.

"I know Warren. It just scares me to think of people trying to force you into something like that."

"Hey, I have Will Stronghold on my side, not to mention the rest of my friends. You think anyone's going to be able to keep _them_ from rescuing me?" I said with a bit of a smile. Mom grinned back at me.

"Well, there is that. Great-great-grandma didn't have such… dedicated protectors. I think if people knew if they'd have to deal with the son of the Commander and Jetstream if they touched you, they'd be a lot more reluctant. But," Mom shook her head, "maybe we're blowing this out of proportion. Look at us, thinking up disasters before they can even happen. I'm going to call a locksmith. You go relax for a while."

I kissed Mom on the top of the head and finally retreated to my own room. I stared for the longest time at my ceiling, then finally rolled over and grabbed my phone. I hoped Will's talk with his parents had gone all right. We had a few problems of our own to talk about now.


	18. Necessary Evil

 

Will's phone rang. And rang. And rang. After about the fifth time I'd gotten Stronghold's voice mail, I gave up. I really wasn't a voice mail kind of guy anyway, and had left only a "Will, call me when you get a chance," the first time. Since I had never tried to call him that many times in a row, hopefully Stronghold would figure out that this was important.

I watched the locksmith pull up from my bedroom window, and could see Mom standing on the porch to talk to him. The locksmith in this neighborhood was actually The Locksmith, a former Sidekick with a kind of weak technopathic power to deal with locks. He also did carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work, and had a few other employees that handled other odd jobs.

Around here, you needed someone with discretion, because otherwise someone was going to notice that five doors and two banisters had needed to be replaced at the Stronghold house in a month. Or that occasionally the Pattersons needed to replace wires or floorboards that had been chewed through, despite the fact that they didn't have pets or pests. Or that somehow in the Peace house a lock had been heated until red hot and popped out of the door.

"So what happened this time, Ms. Joy?" I heard him ask. The Locksmith was something of a curmudgeon, but he was fairly proud of the fact that he was on a first-name basis with some of the world's greatest superheroes. "Yer son forget his key again?"

 _That only happened once!_ I protested silently. _And it was the back door._

"No, nothing like that," Mom said, sounding a little brittle. "I'd rather not get into details right now, if you don't mind Joe. I've had a rough night."

"Yer sure? This looks kinda serious," he pressed. I heard some faint clinking as he quickly reassembled the lock.

"Very sure Joe. Please, I just want to get to bed early," she said pleadingly. The Locksmith quickly folded under my mom's gaze and finished up in nothing flat. In another minute, he was leaving, and I heard my mom lock the door. I rolled off my bed and headed to the living room.

"Mom? All done?" I asked her as I came down the stairs. It was a dumb question, but I was trying to work myself up to what I wanted to ask.

"What is it, Warren? Come sit down," she said, patting the couch next to her. She looked at me searchingly, trying to find my question before I could ask. "I'm doing all right now, I think."

"Yeah… Mom, how could your powers hurt someone?" I asked her quickly. That had been bothering me since Tobias left. It was good to know she could defend herself against someone like him, provided she got angry enough to be willing to use her powers offensively, but I really didn't know everything about how her abilities worked.

"I… can manipulate all kinds of emotions Warren. Not just calmness, friendliness, and patience, but fear, hate, and rage too. My only limit is how much I'm willing to feel, and to channel. And if I can channel more than someone else can take… they generally break," she said slowly.

 _Jesus H. Christ_. _No wonder she was so uptight in high school._ I realized I was a lot more like her than I had thought. I drove people away with my attitude to keep from hurting them with my powers, and to keep them from hurting me. She had gone all formal and stiff for the same reason.

"My powers can be… insidious. That's why I was so afraid to use them for the longest time. It's very easy to justify trying to make someone feel better. And there's a very thin line between helping someone and manipulating them. I… worry about that constantly. But when I'm angry, it becomes easy to justify letting someone know _exactly_ how angry you are."

"You would have done that?" I asked her cautiously.

"If he had gone a single step farther, I would have scared him out of several years' worth of life, at the very least. He's very used to power, and _isn't_ used to having others around that can put him in his place. He's confident to the point of arrogance, and that's a dangerous place for him to be in. I think he understands us both a lot better now. No matter what he _thought_ he knew about us, now he knows what we're both capable of," she explained.

"And is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked.

"Probably both," she sighed. "He likes to be in control. He's used to his family obeying him. You impressed him, but also angered him. I know he was impressed by your audacity in asking for the pressure point hold, and even more so that you used it against him. But he also thinks you're overly passionate and protective."

"I _am,_ " I snorted.

"I know it darling. Play it very cool with him the next time you talk. Don't give him an excuse to dismiss you as someone who lets their feelings rule their head, or he'll try to manipulate you again," she cautioned. "He's not a bad person, Warren." I nodded reluctantly.

"Fine, I think I can do that," I said with a sigh. I was going to say something else, but then my phone started to ring. I checked the caller ID reflexively: Will. I showed it to my mom; she nodded and shooed me upstairs for some privacy.

"Warren, what's going on?" Will asked when I answered.

"A lot of things. How'd it go?" I asked cautiously. If things had gone worse for Will with his parents than he had hoped, I didn't necessarily want to drop that kind of bomb on him tonight.

"Fine. Seriously, what's going on with you?" he asked shortly.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

" _You_ called _me._ You _never_ call me. You called me _tonight_ , when you knew I was going to be talking to the parents. And you called me by my first name, which you've done maybe two times," he pointed out.

"Um… yeah. I had a little talk with my family…" I said.

"But your mom already knew, didn't she?" he asked, sounding a little confused and impatient.

"Not with my mom," I corrected, taking a deep breath. "With my grandfather. Tobias Battle. He was here when I got home."

"Oh man… ooooh man. What happened?" he asked. I hesitated a moment. Will probably didn't need to hear how Tobias had burned my mom, or why, or how he had provoked me into attacking him. Maybe later, but definitely not tonight.

"He came to warn me. He said he had heard rumors about my… new power…" I started carefully. "He had heard people might start asking me to heal them. And some would be more… insistent. They might try to capture me and force me to heal."

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and if I hadn't heard some faint breathing, I would have thought he had hung up.

"Holy moly," he said finally. "Like _now?_ "

I shook my head, despite the fact that Will couldn't see me.

"No, not now. That's why he… came over tonight. He… hadn't heard anything specific; he just wanted me to… be prepared," I explained carefully.

"Like how?" he asked.

"I need you, your parents, and everyone else that knows about what I can do to keep their mouths shut," I told him. "Somehow rumors got all the way over to Europe. Tobias is going to try to… counter them from his side of the pond. I have to call the Bureau and talk to them about it too."

"Sure, sure, I'll tell them. I'll tell Layla, I think it'll get to _everyone_ that way," he said, the last with a bit of humor. Layla would take this seriously, I knew it, but if there was a faster way to distribute information than a sixteen year-old girl, I wasn't aware of it.

"Heh. Yeah," I said, cracking a smile.

"So… why did he show up now? I kinda thought he disowned you or something," Will asked tentatively.

"It's… a long story," I said. "He told us… he kind of had to ignore us when… my dad got put in jail. But now he didn't have to any more. He didn't want to in the first place."

"That sounds… kinda messed up," Will offered.

"My family in a nutshell Stronghold. Go talk to Layla, I really need to get some sleep," I shot back, trying not to snap.

"Sure thing… uh, I think my parents will want to talk to your mom though when I tell them. Better give her the heads-up," he warned.

"Done. Thanks," I said, and hung up.

I called down to Mom to warn her, and then collapsed back into bed. The phone downstairs rang five minutes later, but I wasn't awake to hear what was being said. I just hoped Will's parents wouldn't say anything stupid; Mom wasn't in a mood to deal with fools tonight.

* * *

My friends made a few tentative calls back to me over the weekend, offering their personal promise of silence. The house line rang practically off the hook as Mom fielded the call from everyone's parents, trying to simultaneously quell old rumors and stave off new ones. I felt a little bad leaving her to take the brunt of it, but she _was_ the diplomat.

It was Ethan's call, though, that ended up being the hardest for me. Will had apparently reported verbatim what I had told him to Layla, and she had kept the information intact when she told everyone else. However, Ethan had more specific questions, and I ended up having to basically spill most of the confrontation to him. Then he picked something out of the whole mess that drew me up short.

"So which supervillain did he hear the rumors from?" he had asked me. I had had no idea, and came to the grudging conclusion that I had to call my grandfather to ask him. If it had been someone we could trace back to Royal Pain's academy, then we couldn't afford to pass up that knowledge. Cutter or Painbreaker _might_ have seen me healing Magenta, and if they were the source of the rumors, we _had_ to know.

I didn't want to have to talk to Tobias again so soon, but realized I had somehow let that rather important bit of information completely slide past me. Mom provided me his number without comment, and I made the call on Saturday morning.

"Warren, good to hear from you so soon," he greeted me smoothly. _What, he has my number in caller ID already?_ I thought sullenly. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?"

"I wanted to ask you which supervillain you heard those rumors from," I said, getting right to the point. Tobias was probably worlds better than me at fencing with words, and I wasn't going to try to play so far out of my league.

"Ah yes. It was John Tennyson, the Weaponsmaster. Retired now; he realized he could make more money selling his weapons designs to terrorist groups than by robbing banks and mints. However, he's a very well connected individual; if he knows, then probably a dozen others do. Which others, I'm still tracking down, though," he said quickly.

"How… exactly did you get information out of him?" I asked.

"As I said before, in a roundabout fashion."

"Enlighten me," I shot back.

"My servants. My butler's first cousin's maternal aunt works in the Tennyson household as a cook. She heard it during a dinner party when she came in to accept compliments," he said with a sigh. I almost laughed, but stopped myself in time. _It sounds like some kind of bad romance novel…_

"I… see," I choked out.

"Most people who live in old money tend to take their servants for granted. But they're wonderful sources of information because people forget to pay attention to them. We've often taken advantage of that fact," he said a little proudly. I bristled at the mention of "we."

"Why's that? You don't seem like you would care for the little guy that much," I countered, my momentary good humor gone.

"When you're capable of accidentally burning, freezing, or electrocuting someone if you become careless, you learn to pay attention to _everyone_ around you, no matter how insignificant they may seem," he said calmly. I shut up for a good thirty seconds. _Damnit, he's right again._

"Right. Thanks for the information," I said after a pause.

"Of course Warren. It was good to hear from you."

After I hung up I seriously considered melting the phone to keep myself from being that stupid again.

* * *

I spent the weekend working at the Paper Lantern and doing a lot of thinking, in between all the calls. I was working a lot less than I had been; the increase in class load had sucked up a lot of my former free time. Mrs. Lee had been understanding, and was already looking for a replacement. Now I was just grateful I had the time to myself. I sometimes thought better when I had something else to do.

I could guess that my friends were all probably torn, Will in particular. I mean, you didn't think about superheroes needing to be rescued. During a fight, or maybe after a dastardly capture by a supervillain, but not after being snatched off the street. It wasn't that I was any less freaked than the rest of them by the news, but I had almost immediately decided that I wasn't going to hide.

If someone wanted to find me, they were going to find me. And if they really, _really_ wanted to capture me, then that was going to happen too. That was the fatalistic part of me talking, but there was cold comfort in acknowledging the worst that could happen and accepting it. Of course, they could only take me with a fight, and most people had some reason to _not_ want to get caught.

I traveled to work and school on a bus, my house had a security system, and when I went out, I was usually with people. Even went I went to the skate park, that place was never deserted, not even at the oddest hours of the night or morning. So I probably couldn't be taken without someone seeing me, and then they would have to deal with my friends. I don't think I could be much safer with them at my back.

* * *

I ended up having to make the request to the Bureau in person, something I hadn't expected or was looking forward to. Mom took me after my shift on Saturday, driving me downtown to the central office. Most large cities had a field office for the Bureau, though only a very small part of it was open to the public. We had to take the elevator to the fifth floor, which was actually down somewhere underground. The buttons were actually power and fingerprint scanners; those heroes registered with the Bureau got shuttled down to the _real_ part of the office belowground. Those that weren't simply went to the regular floor aboveground as advertised.

The doors opened on the massive, high ceilinged, marble-walled vestibule. I wondered idly if all government agencies had some architect tucked away that made a living designing these spaces to make all visitors feels insignificant. The seal was laid into the floor in bronze, Atlas with the world on his shoulders, a rather appropriate design, I remember thinking. The motto was also inlaid just underneath, the personal saying of one of the greatest heroes ever to live: "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility." It was an old saying, probably as old as superheroes, but it didn't make it any less true.

Mom led me into the warren of offices and corridors, greeting most of the people she saw by name, introducing me to everyone with a bright smile. The smiles in return were a lot less bright, I noticed a little bitterly, but I was civil. I didn't need to alienate any of my mom's co-workers, not when eventually they were going to be _my_ co-workers. That thought brought me up a little short, because come next August that was exactly what was going to happen. And that was a very strange thought.

Eventually we ended up in front of a set of massive doors, which Mom knocked on without hesitation.

"Hey Mom, whose office is this anyway?" I asked. I hoped she had made an appointment with whomever we had to see, because I sure hadn't. I doubted they, whoever they were, would like it if we just barged in.

"Kane Adams," she said simply, gesturing to the nameplate over to the left I hadn't noticed. "The Maxville Director of Operations."

I looked at her, wide-eyed. Kane Adams, a.k.a. Crimson Tempus, was a contemporary of the Commander, able to control fire. He was a particularly scary superhero, very physically imposing and intimidating. Apparently he and my dad had been friendly rivals in the Sky High Pyro Club, even though they were a few years apart. I didn't know what he thought of me, but I wasn't very interested in finding out.

"Why do we have to see the director?" I whispered frantically, knowing it was already too late. "Why can't we just see one of the tech guys?"

"The director has to confirm all security clearances," she said with a shrug as the doors opened. "Relax honey, he's fond of theatrics, but his bark is worse than his bite when it comes to superheroes."

The office was dimly lit, showing only a hulking shape behind a large desk. As we entered, a small bowl of oil ignited on the desk, showing the craggy face of the director. He stood up as we came in, an ill-suited smile coming to his face. He was at least a foot taller than me and built like a damn refrigerator. How the hell had my dad had any kind of _friendly_ rivalry with this guy? He looked like he could pound Will into the ground with one hand, super strength not withstanding.

"Peacemaker, Mr. Peace, welcome. Please, sit down. Can I offer you anything to drink?" he said pleasantly. We both accepted coffee, and I killed a few minutes loading it up with sugar to steady my nerves.

"So, I was given to understand by the Peacemaker's request that you've received some threats, Mr. Peace," he said calmly.

" _Rumors_ of threats," I corrected a little hesitantly. This guy was definitely rattling my cage, but not for any one reason I could name. He was someone who knew my dad. He could control fire and thus was probably immune to anything I could do to him. He might be thinking I was a born villain. He was the director of the Maxville branch of the Bureau and thus could make my life very easy or very hard depending on how he felt. He was physically strong enough to turn me into a pretzel if he didn't like me… Any of those could have been contributing to my nervousness.

"Indeed, but from a rather reliable source. The Peacemaker told me all she knew, and I'm rather inclined to believe that Ember-keeper was telling the truth. Your grandfather's superhero name," he added when my face went blank at Ember-keeper. "The Battle family has traditional names for their members. The patriarch is Fire King, but the retired patriarch is always Ember-keeper. I prefer to use people's superhero names when at all possible. Keeps from slipping up during a crisis."

I nodded warily.

"So… you agree about the security clearance?" I asked.

"Certainly. Of course! This isn't the first time this situation has come up; there are several superheroes that have powers that shouldn't be bantered about lightly. You're only the most recent to have that problem. I needed you here because I have to add your biometrics to the system. By the time I'm done the only people who will be able to view your powers are the directors, you, and your family… if that's what you want."

I hesitated a second, and looked over at mom.

" _All_ of my family?" I asked.

"Peace and Battle. Usually hiding something from family members is pointless, so we tend to include them as a matter of course. Unless you'd prefer not to," he said, looking down at me. I think he was just daring me to cut them out of this, despite the fact that I only knew one of my extended family. I considered doing it, just to annoy him, but stopped myself. I did _not_ need to antagonize Kane Adams. I think he was only trying to rile me to see if he _could_.

And maybe if my mom's family realized what I could do, they'd be willing to mend fences. In thinking about it, it _seriously_ annoyed me that it had been my dad's family that had been the first to extend an olive branch. Maybe a little shame would do what my mom's patient pleading couldn't.

"Sure, all of them, why not?" I said, locking gazes with him. He stared for a second, and then nodded.

"You're going to be all right, Mr. Peace," he said, gesturing for me to come around to his side of the desk. In a few minutes, he had my palm-print, power-signature, retina patterns, and a few other measurements I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to know about locked into the computer, barricading the knowledge of my new powers to everyone but the most highly, or closely, placed.

* * *

On Monday morning, I knocked on the door to Mrs. Peterson's office well before school started. There was an early bus for those of us with projects, appointments, or detention, and even though it killed me to get up at five a.m., I caught it anyway. I had a couple things to get done before class. A faint wind blew the door open, and I repressed a smile as the Stormrider waved for me to come in.

"Well then Mr. Peace, what can I do for you today?" she said cheerily, slowly typing something into her computer.

"You told me at the beginning of the year that I needed to figure out what to do when I graduate," I reminded her.

"Ah yes, yes, all your friends are far too young for proper, official hero work yet. But you, yes you will be very ready in August, yes you will," she said. She reminded me a little of Nurse Spex, but not nearly so together. She couldn't be senile, not and still be working at this school, but that didn't necessarily follow that she had all her marbles either. Superheroes were a _very_ strange bunch.

"I had an idea about a cover job. And maybe I can do hero work on the side while I'm doing that," I explained.

"Oh really? How marvelous! Most seniors still don't have a single thing in mind for what they're going to do when they get out. For a cover, I mean. Not usually. Well, except for three, they know exactly what they're doing. And you now," she said with a smile. "Delightful! What did you have in mind?"

"EMT," I said. I had decided that Tobias' advice, however poorly presented, was probably sound. I didn't think I could handle being a doctor, even if I had had the time or money to consider medical school. Physical therapist or something like it was out for the same reason. But as an EMT I would be _expected_ to be at the scene of accidents and disasters; it would give me a convenient excuse to be where I needed to be without cheesy explanations. Of course, this did mean I would have to learn how to drive…

"Well then, good choice, we've had more than one person use that as a cover in the last few years. Sound choice too, out of the spotlight. Would you believe Lester LaDuke actually wants to _play_ in a _band?_ Or Penny Potter wants to go to Paris to be a _model_ of all things? At least little Stanley Sofferman had the good sense to want to do video editing or something like that. I'm a little fuzzy on all the technical things, don't you know. Now let's get some paperwork started so we can get you into the right classes…" she said, starting to fish through her filing cabinet for the right forms.

 _Lester? Stanley? Good grief, no wonder Lash and Speed took nicknames_ , I thought with amusement as I found myself inundated with questions about my near future.

* * *

My next stop was Principal Power's office. The secretary, a rather motherly looking woman with a knowing eye, gave me a wary glance as I asked to see the principal. Mrs. Erickson was one of those people that knew, or thought they knew, everything about everybody. Since she tended to know exactly who ended up in the principal's office and for what reason, she was a little nonplussed at students asking to voluntarily see her. Nevertheless, the principal granted me an audience, and Mrs. Erickson's curiosity had to go unassuaged.

"Mr. Peace? Is this about the phone call I received from your mother this weekend?" she opened. I nodded shortly. Mom had taken care of Powers, Boomer, and Spex, saying, quite rightly, that the demand for silence would sound a lot better coming from her rather than me.

"I wanted to talk to you about the tapes from the Gauntlet and Homecoming," I explained.

"You want them put under the same clearances that the Bureau does I take it?" she said.

"Yeah. I… Those tapes are the best hard evidence of my… new power. I don't want everyone at school seeing them because Coach Boomer thinks it'd make a good training video," I said. I was pretty sure Powers would have had to do that anyway, but I didn't necessarily trust Coach Boomer to be as discrete.

"Of course, I was going to put those portions of the tapes under clearance this morning. You know, I got a call from your grandfather yesterday. As did Coach Boomer," she added casually. I tried not to swallow my tongue.

"What?" I finally got out a little angrily. _I can't believe he did that. Does he think I'm not capable of taking care of my own problems?_

"Yes, he was interested in how you were doing in class. He was very polite. I was a little surprised, I admit, I hadn't known you were even in contact with your father's family," she said with a peculiar half-smile.

_Arrogant, highhanded- wait, what did she just say?_

"I… just started," I said weakly, taken aback.

"Well, at any rate, yes, I will make certain the vital parts of those tapes are edited and put under proper security clearance. And you have my personal promise to keep quiet about what I've seen you do; Coach Boomer and Nurse Spex have said the same. I will be discussing this with Lash, Speed, and Penny later today," she said, still smiling oddly as I stood to leave.

"And Mr. Peace? Trust me when I tell you that you have a great many friends here that would be very angry if you, or any other student, came to grief. Everyone here at Sky High has chosen to teach the next generation of heroes for a reason."

I left her office in a somewhat disturbed state of mind. Mrs. Erickson was almost smirking when I came out, and I found myself darkly wondering if everyone knew what was going on but me.

* * *

Mr. Medulla's term in our class was over, and we had yet another new teacher today. Our next subject was Superpowered Psychology, something that just made me want to bang my head on my desk, considering what happened last week. My mood was not improved by the fact that our teacher was Ms. Olsen, also known as The Mentalist. She was a powerful mind reader, and still on the active list within the government, probably somewhere ridiculously top secret.

"We will be having a visitor in a few minutes, then we will begin our class with our first section: The Hero Mentality," she was saying, passing out packets of notes for us to follow along. Also she passed out some kind of psych test, and we spent the next ten minutes writing down our favorite color, least favorite food, and the first thing we had thought about this morning, amongst other things. I think she was just trying to kill time, because I don't think that "Red, Anchovies," or "Breakfast" was going to give any insight into my state of mind.

We were brought out of our busywork by the arrival of Principal Powers, our visitor. She looked a great deal less smug than she had a half-hour ago, and was watching us all like a hawk.

"This should just take a moment Ms. Olsen. Gentlemen, ladies, I will be addressing the school on Wednesday regarding Royal Pain's academy," she said quickly. All of us caught our breath; it seemed far too soon. It had only been two weeks since we had figured it out, after all.

"Because of the efforts of the staff of the this school, and the Peacemaker, we will have your parents on our side when we finally break the news to the student body and the school board. We've accelerated the training for the rest of the students in the week you've been gone, and all our best information has Royal Pain's first class graduating with ours in the spring. After the setbacks she received in attempting to kill Speed, Lash, and Penny, amongst others, she's going to be forced to be more cautious. It gives us breathing room, and _now_ is the time to let the rest of the school know what they're training for," she explained.

"What do you want us to do?" Will asked.

"I need your permission to show the tapes from your defense of Lash, Speed, and Penny on Homecoming night," she said simply. "Minus the part where Mr. Peace healed Ms. Patterson of course. We'll just say you used the antivenin in the medical kit to stabilize her until you were able to get back to Nurse Spex."

We all looked at each other, various expressions of surprise on everyone's face.

"That was an ugly fight, Principal Powers," Will said finally. _Ugly? That's one way of putting it, Stronghold,_ I thought to myself. _I would have used screwed-up, crappy, or ridiculous._

"I understand that. I also know you don't want your mistakes broadcasted to everyone in the school. However, you used excellent teamwork and a very fine set of tactics against Royal Pain's group, even if things didn't go according to plan. I won't be showing the unexpurgated tapes. I'll mostly be showing a very edited version depicting Cutter and her group, so the students can see what kind of opposition they'll be up against.

"But I think at least some of the senior groups should see the mostly unedited tapes. Coach Boomer is going to start running groups against each other, and I want your group in there frequently. You've been in two real fights, which is more than I can say for any other group at Sky High," she explained.

"Um… won't the rest of the kids be kinda jealous that we got picked?" Zack asked. I winced internally; he was right. We seriously didn't need to antagonize the seniors by flaunting the fact that a group of sophomores were chosen to handle the first real hero assignment. Principal Powers shook her head, smiling a bit.

"You all have a rather devoted little following. Quite the fan club, really. People tend to look up to you since you saved the school, do you know that?" she told us.

 _Fan club? Oh no. No, no, no, no, no…_ I dropped my head on my desk and tried not to groan. _No wonder those people have been hanging around Will's locker in between classes._

"Uh, we've been a little busy, um… working?" Will offered lamely. Powers laughed.

"We've been trying to keep you out of trouble. But I assure you; you aren't going to antagonize the student body with my announcement. Probably a lot of people are going to want to talk to you afterward to find out what its like to be in a real fight. Of course, some people won't like it, but there's no pleasing everyone."

"Dude, we got peeps!" Zack said with a broad grin. This time I did groan.

"It won't be _that_ bad Mr. Peace," Principal Powers pointed out. "It might actually have the opposite effect on you, you realize. Because of how you defeated Cutter."

 _Because I burned her. Yeah… I should consider myself lucky if anyone would sit on the same_ side _of the cafeteria as me after seeing that._ I shrugged fatalistically.

"If they think that, then they don't know me. And I don't want to know them," I said, raising my head.

"But you got us! So don't go all grouchy," Layla said with a smile.

"Grouchier," Magenta corrected, and I tossed her a withering glare.

"Then I'll see you all on Wednesday morning," Powers said with a firm nod. "Let's just hope nobody panics."


	19. Don't Panic

 

"So, I trust you all have come to some kind of terms with your most recent battle?" Ms. Olsen said to us shortly after Principal Powers left. "Because you know that you will be grilled on it over and over, both by your fellow students and the school board."

We all looked at each other warily and then back up at our teacher.

"I think so," Will ventured.

"Well, at least you're not overconfident. That's primarily what I was worried about. Young heroes tend to need their… sense of superiority taken out of them. It's obvious you're all a bit more practical than my typical group of students. Excellent," she said crisply. "Hopefully our lessons in the next couple of days will give you some additional insight into both yourselves, and what to expect.

"Now, as a general rule, I will not be giving tests in this class." Zack started to cheer, then shut his mouth at Ms. Olsen's glare.

"I will instead be doing a mind-scan to determine what you truly understand about the material I've presented to you. I find that to be a _much_ more efficient and practical way of determining what you have retained and comprehended than any essay question. I will be doing this throughout our time together, which will also give you some practice in performing your mental defense techniques," she said with a strange smile.

Basic Mental Defense was a freshmen course, one that everyone at Sky High took in his or her first week. Unless you had actual psychic powers of some kind, there was only so much you could do to defend yourself against an evil telepath or a mind-scrambler ray, but there were a few tricks everyone learned. The simplest was to imagine a wall around your mind. A strong psychic could get around or break through it eventually, but it would definitely slow them down. And for those of us who were non-psychics, that was the best we could do.

It was just the idea of having even a teacher poking at our brains at regular intervals that made me uncomfortable. On the other hand, maybe she wouldn't _want_ to dig too deeply into my head. I wasn't always necessarily comfortable in my _own_ mind; I doubt she would be either.

"On to our first subject, the Hero Mentality and the lure of power. There are many things we will be covering in the following days; the desire to help the helpless, willing self-sacrifice, the sublimation of yourself into your heroic identity, things that, while noble, are not unique. Any hero, super or not, feels this way. Heroic bystanders of disaster, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, and many others share these heroic qualities. What obviously separates us from them is our powers.

"Our powers are both our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. With them we can take on tasks of truly Herculean proportions, to alter world-shaking events with less effort than it takes some people to breathe. This is our one true advantage over all the other mundane heroes of the world. Conversely, the existence of our powers is what leads to the creation of supervillains.

"Super-powered people, in general, like using their powers. Powering up tends to give one a sense of, for lack of a better word, power. Most people _like_ powering up; it's fun, it gives a sense of confidence, control, or rightness that just can't be duplicated any other way. You certainly wouldn't want to give up your powers, even if they occasionally cause you grief, because your powers are so very much entwined with your own identity."

I caught myself glancing around at the rest of my friends during that lecture. It hit pretty close to the bone, though I wasn't the only one who was squirming in my seat. Magenta in particular looked both uncomfortable and thoughtful, mirroring what I must look like.

"It is this feeling of power that can create any person of an evil bent. People with power sometimes grow fond of it and want more. And those with none or very little often want some of their own. Apply this to super-powered people, and you get supervillains. Someone who likes their superpowers too much, and the attendant temporal power it engenders-. That means the more mundane power we super-people have, Mr. Cramer. The fact that we are bound by different laws, have less responsibility and penalties for our actions in return for our service to the people does give us a fair amount of power that has nothing to do with our extraordinary abilities."

Since Zack had barely opened his mouth to talk when Ms. Olsen answered his unspoken question, he snapped his mouth shut again and looked a little confused.

"Strengthen your mental walls Mr. Cramer, you're practically shoving your thoughts in my face. I should have to work for them, not have to shut them out," she chided gently. Zack nodded, wide-eyed, and stared fixedly at his desk for a second

"Better," she nodded. "As I was saying, when someone likes both their superpowers and temporal power too much, you tend to get supervillains. Specifically, you get megalomaniac supervillains with insane overconfidence in their powers and intelligence, with little ability to recognize their own weaknesses. We're not certain of why this correlation between love of power and breakdown of morality occurs, but it has been proven time and time again over our history.

"It has even happened to those who are trained to be superheroes. The most recent examples of this are Royal Pain and Baron Battle. Cool your mental fires Mr. Peace, there's no need to burn me out of your mind. I'm not prying."

Back in my freshman year, they had told us to make our mental walls into an image we could easily hold onto. I obviously chose a firewall; it was easy for me to remember and maintain. And I hoped to hell it was giving her a headache right now. I wasn't going to let her know how much that bothered me… at least any more than she had already figured out.

"It's a little rude to talk about Warren's dad, don't you think?" Layla asked tightly, raising an eyebrow. I owed her one for asking that for me; I was busy keeping myself calm. I couldn't keep going off the deep end every time someone started talking about my dad, no matter how much it angered me. It was a damn obvious weakness that I broadcasted to the world every time someone made a comment about it. I had already had more than one occasion of having my weaknesses shoved in my face, and I didn't want this to become another one of them.

"It's necessary Miss Evans. Most supervillains are self-taught, or perhaps apprenticed to another of their ilk at best. We rarely get to see the process that leads someone to take on the villain mentality. I've made a study of superheroes-turned-supervillains, including extensive interviews and mind-scans. Two of my subjects are Baron Battle and Royal Pain. Technically that makes two people out of the same class of Sky High that went villain, and that made me wonder if there was something internal that triggered both of their transformations.

"When a superhero goes to the bad, we want to know _why_. And we want you to understand it too, because it could allow you to stop one of your co-workers or yourself before your make a bad decision. In Baron Battle's case, it was a classic love of power. After interviewing him I have concluded that it was a purely internal decision. Possibly it could have been stopped or even reversed if it had been both recognized and addressed right away, but even that is uncertain.

"In Royal Pain's case, her turn to villainy happened initially from the other end of the spectrum. She had little power to begin with, and desired more of it. Eventually that took over all other aspects in her life, and she turned her own powers to revenge to get it. Possibly if someone had recognized how very badly Royal Pain was taking her status as a Sidekick, her descent into villainy might have been stopped.

"However, many super-people have very strong wills; it's what gives us the ability to use our powers effectively. Swaying them from their path can be difficult; it's why supervillains never seem to stop unless captured or killed."

She paused a moment to look each of us in the eyes, whether she was trying to gauge our reactions or read our minds, I didn't know. I mentally held onto the picture of the firewall anyway; let her get past _that_ if she was so damn eager to know exactly what I thought on the subject of my father. If I couldn't control my thoughts on the subject, I could at least control my expression and powers. It almost felt like she was picking at me, trying to get me to react or at least comment. But today wasn't going to be a good day for that.

"Now, on the opposite side of power, you have people who either hate or are indifferent to their powers. Some people simply fade into the citizen community, taking no sides in the super-powered conflict. Others end up getting recruited by supervillains. For those that dislike their powers, or are indifferent but care little for how they're used, a powerful supervillain can offer a lot. As a villainous sidekick, they are given an identity, protection, and the ability to be a part of something greater than themselves.

"Villains sidekicks get the same kind of craving for power their supervillains do, but can only do it by basically giving up their own will. They get what they want in exchange for their service. It's why so many of them end up as punching bags for their villains. They'll put up with anything to keep their new identities.

"And finally, you have those who not only hate their powers, but despise them and everything that comes with them. Sometimes a person's powers are very hard to control, possibly even turning on their wielder and causing them emotional distress or even physical harm. If these unstable super-people aren't picked up by super-villains or find some other way of coping, they often do something very drastic.

"Some have been known to commit suicide. Others have gone stark raving mad and gone on rampages that have to be seen to be believed. The Vulture Lord and Carrion King were two that fell into this category. The former was active a few years ago; he could control avians, particularly vultures, but his control was linked to his emotions. Since he had a very troubled mind, things did not go well. If you will, recall the film The Birds. Imagine that, on a scale of a dozen square miles."

Magenta was a big horror fan, and had forced us to watch more than one movie that had given Zack nightmares. That had been amongst them, and we all winced at the thought.

"Now, despite the fact that I don't give tests in this class, I'm not permitted to have a paperless classroom. I would like you all to use the remainder of the period to begin drafting an essay on your own interpretations of power and its use in the superhero world…"

Zack would have groaned if Magenta hadn't thumped him in the ribs. Ms. Olsen pretended not to see and rattled off the rest of the specifications, then retreated behind her desk so we could write. I noticed something odd that kept distracting me. Every few minutes someone's head would snap up almost violently. They'd stare at our teacher for a few minutes, and then go back to their work. I wasn't looking forward to my turn.

 _Your mind is not at all like your father's, Mr. Peace,_ I heard a faint voice in my head. I snapped my own head up and glared at her, mentally bringing up the firewall again.

_Then again, most children's minds do not resemble their parents. It's a conceit for them to think their children are anything like them, simply because they sprang from them._

_Out of my head now_ , I thought very clearly. There was a faint pressure along with her mental voice, like someone was digging or prying, and it was far from comfortable. Not to mention I wasn't interested in knowing the intimate details of the inner workings of my dad's mind.

_You're fairly good at keeping your walls up. Only Miss Evans and Miss Patterson are better at it. Then again, women tend to be better at this kind of thing. And if you're not going to let your walls down, make sure you put your ideas in this essay. I need to know your thoughts on the subject of power, one way or another._

_You do realize that I'm going to be testing you on a regular basis, Mr. Peace. I sense no undue instability in you, but with your history and heritage, it's going to be hard to convince others of that. I'm sure you're well aware of all of this, but I have to make it my business to report the truth._

_Reporting to whom?_ I thought back. This was a hell of a weird way to talk; I was getting faint pictures along with her words.

_My superiors. The Bureau, of course. You're the first offspring of a known villain to pass through Sky High. Considering what kind of damage your father did to the superhero community in general and your mother specifically, you can understand their caution. Most are greatly in favor of your entry into the superhero world, but some are still… wary._

I felt a flash of anger when she mentioned Mom, but stopped myself. _You're baiting me,_ I accused.

_How easily are you swayed by my thoughts? You shouldn't be at all. The opinions of another person mean nothing unless they have some power over you._

_You're a teacher, and you work for the Bureau. Call me crazy, but I think that puts you higher up on the power scale than a senior in high school,_ I thought back.

_It's good to know where I stand, then. I'm not going to try to hold you or your friends back Mr. Peace. It's just that you will be facing the realities of superhero work far sooner than your friends. Unfortunately there are those within the Bureau, and even active heroes that will always be prying at you for weaknesses. You, of all people, cannot afford to show them that. You must show them you take responsibility for your power, always._

I gritted my teeth a bit and nodded, returning to my work. This class was going to be interesting… as about as interesting as an all-day Gauntlet run when Boomer was having a bad day.

* * *

No one else at school knew why we were all cramming into the auditorium during first period on Wednesday morning. The teachers were as mystified as the students, and the curious collection on stage of the principal and heads of the science, psychology, and physical education departments didn't do much to enlighten them. The fact that my friends and I were sitting in the front row instead of with our classes also didn't bode well. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that we hadn't been in class for the last two weeks, and some people _had_ to be wondering what we were up to.

Powers raised up her hands for silence as the last class filed in, and the hall monitors arranged at the doors nodded at her to signal that everyone was present and accounted for.

"I have a very important announcement to make to not only all of you students, but to the staff as well. I hope you will understand exactly why things have fallen out the way they have, and consider it with all due gravity.

"Royal Pain's attack last Homecoming left a deep mark on the school. You've been working harder than you ever have before in response to that, and now it's time to know the full truth behind the changes at Sky High. It wasn't just it was time for a change, or to make you better heroes, though those were certainly part of it. It was to prepare you, to prepare you to fight against supervillains from Royal Pain's Supervillain Academy."

Whispers swelled in the auditorium, and Powers spoke again before they could gain any more momentum. The teachers in the audience looked shocked, even more so than the students, and some were starting to look a little pissed too.

"From the moment she left Sky High the first time until her defeat and capture last year, she had been building, funding, staffing, and recruiting for her academy. Pacifying Sky High last year was not the beginning of her plans, but the culmination of them. During her twenty-three years as Royal Pain, she made very extensive plans for her academy, including contingency plans to carry on in the event of her capture or death. Her academy is getting ready to graduate a whole _class_ of supervillains in the spring. We've been preparing you to fight against them.

"Now, we know this because of the assistance of the three students that Royal Pain had recruited as minions. After Royal Pain's capture, however, Lash, Speed, and Penny turned from allies to liabilities. In the past few months, two attempts have been made on their lives as part of a lethal graduation exercise from the academy."

Gasps sounded around the auditorium, and a few people turned pale.

"In the attempts, Lash and Speed were poisoned and one of Penny's clones was killed. We knew Royal Pain would make yet another attempt, a much more overt one, on this year's Homecoming night. Due to the possibility of spies at Sky High, we could not put them under the protection of superheroes or even teachers. If we revealed we knew of the existence of the academy, they could attempt to step up their own program and launch attacks against you, the students, _en masse_. It was a difficult decision, but I asked students here at Sky High to defend Speed, Lash, and Penny.

"Some of you may have already figured this out, considering who's been absent from class the past two weeks, but allow me to explain. I needed the best team for the job, a group with diverse talents and a close friendship, as well as some creativity and experience in real combat. There was only group that fit that description; the students that defeated Royal Pain _last_ Homecoming: William Stronghold, Layla Evans, Magenta Patterson, Zachary Cramer, Ethan Howard, and Warren Peace."

We stood up briefly when she called our names, but we didn't wave or anything. It would have looked unforgivably arrogant, considering what this assembly was about. Louder whispers echoed around the auditorium, and most people were staring at us as if we had lost our minds. Well… being thought crazy was better than people hating us. I think.

"Last week, Royal Pain's academy sent six of her students, as a group, to try to kill Speed, Lash, and Penny. I have some video of the event, so you can see the kind of opposition you'll be up against. Royal Pain managed to recruit the children of supervillains, as well as finding several first generation super-powers to populate her school. _These_ are the next generation of supervillains, and these are the people you'll be most likely to go up against as heroes."

Powers explained where the fight had taken place, and then started the tapes. She had edited what she could, but some parts had to be left in, otherwise there was no context. She talked about each of Cutter's crew as they came up on screen, explaining what had happened to Will with Bloodtalon, how Layla was using her powers on Skybolt, Cutter's teleporting, Ethan and Magenta's attempts to get Bruin and Viper…

I didn't watch the screen; I was half turned around in my seat, watching the rest of the students. People watching had become a hobby of mine before I had met Will and the gang. Being aware of my environment so people couldn't try to sneak up on my to do anything stupid or cruel had become a habit I hadn't bothered to break. I wasn't the best at it, mostly because people were also very aware of _me_ in return; I didn't tend to blend into a crowd very well. But with people's attention on the screen, I could get a pretty good gauge on what they were thinking of this whole situation.

And it wasn't good. Nobody was panicking yet, but they weren't going to accept this calmly either. Everyone had a little bit of fear on their faces; some were much worse off, particularly former Sidekicks. People actually cheered when Magenta stunned Bruin, but some were gasping in shock when Viper tagged her. Several of the stronger former Hero-students had looked particularly freaked out when Powers had described Bloodtalon's attack on Will. I don't think it had ever occurred to them before that _they_ might be the primary targets in a fight.

People winced when Painbreaker tagged Zack, though several looked intrigued when they saw the light bomb-tactics we used to initially blind her and Cutter. I was thankful that Powers had cut out a lot of the audio portion of the tapes so she could talk over them. Whatever Layla had said to Will, for example, didn't need to be broadcasted.

When some people actually screamed, I didn't need to look at the screen to know they were watching the confrontation between Cutter and I. I swallowed hard as some people shot me shocked glances, actually pulling away from our group. If the teachers hadn't been so adamant about students keeping their seats, some of the people in the rows behind us might have tried to move away. I turned to stare at the floor, and Magenta put her hand briefly on my shoulder in comfort. My hands and arms were heavy with heat-haze, and I took a second to exert enough control to power down, shooting Magenta a grateful glance. I think if I had powered up accidentally there might have been a panicked exodus.

Will's dramatic punching out of Skybolt and crash through the roof to help rescue Zack and Magenta didn't get nearly as much of a reaction, despite the fact that Skybolt had looked pretty bad after Will had gotten through with him. A super-strong punch delivered at super-sonic speeds was something to behold. But then again, anyone could punch someone, even if the results wouldn't have been as spectacular. My own powers were a lot more flashy and distinctive, and the results _looked_ a lot worse, even if the actual damage probably wasn't even life threatening.

I had to force down a surge of raw envy towards Will. Even after the rage-inducement, people were still looking at him with a combination of sympathy and respect. Everyone else got sympathetic looks too, rather than the jealously I had been expecting. I realized they had seen most of us get our clocks cleaned and barely carrying the day. They were probably just grateful it hadn't been them. Me, people were looking at with fear. More so than usual even. And of course, they hadn't seen me get hurt, or help Magenta. Even Speed, Lash, and Penny looked a lot more self-sacrificing than I did on the tapes.

 _Well, that's what you're supposed to be doing now, isn't it? Making people afraid of you?_ the practical part of my brain demanded. _And besides, people are_ used _to being scared of you, now it's just a matter of degree._ I kept staring at the floor, trying very hard to not do anything people would misinterpret. Like twitch in the wrong direction.

"Those are the kinds of people you will be going up against. Ruthless, violent, yet very much given to the same weaknesses that we have been teaching you about all along. Far too eager to talk, a little too easy to divide, and far less inclined to help each other. Royal Pain never understood the kind of willpower that drives heroes to their acts of courage, and those who teach at her academy never will. _This_ is how we will beat them, by _being heroes_ , because they cannot understand that we will always do what's right, and we have the strength, not only in and of ourselves, but of our friends fighting by our sides, to _win!_ "

Ok, I was impressed. And so was the rest of the school, to judge by the spontaneous cheering that broke out. People were still afraid, but Principal Powers' speech had given them a little heart back. I looked down the row, and to my surprise spotted Speed, Lash, and Penny, staring at Powers with stunned expressions on their faces. _I guess they never thought they'd be praised for doing anything right…_ That had to be a new experience for them.

The cheering eventually died down as Powers signaled for quiet. Maybe there was something of a hysterical edge to the applause, but better that than a full-blown panic.

"We will be having parent-teacher conferences here in two days, after we break the news to the school board. I have no doubt this will be rather… difficult for the rest of the superhero community to accept. However, please do understand that this changes nothing here at Sky High. Even if you don't like the fact that we kept this information from you, it does not change the fact that there _will_ be a whole class of supervillains out there that will be coming for you. And they have been fed Royal Pain's vendetta against Sky High, which gives them personal motivation to strike and strike hard at anyone who passes from our doors.

"Be wary, be ready, but we _will_ get you prepared to face them. All you need do is be willing to put forth the good effort you have thus far, and you will prevail."

Well, that silenced a lot of questions on peoples' faces. Particularly those on the teachers' faces. They didn't like being left out of the loop, that's for sure. The rest of the assembly went pretty smoothly, with a few quick questions from teachers and students both that silenced a lot of people's accusations that Powers had been holding out on them. A few people were looking pretty rebellious, but there were a lot more with determination and purpose on their faces now. When Powers finally dismissed us all to get back to class, it was with the feeling that the school was _not_ going to spontaneously combust from the effects of fear.

Our group, however, didn't get too far. Powers gave us twenty minutes to get back to class, but made us linger in the auditorium for a bit, something that made me suspicious. My suspicions that were born out when, about five minutes later, nearly all of us were tracked down by small groups of people wanting to talk. _Power Club presidents_ , I realized when Paul Fierre, the president of Pyro Club, flagged me down tentatively.

Power Clubs were organizations for those with similar powers and interests. For instance, Pyro Club was for those with fire powers. There were people in there that could make fire, control fire, shape fire, talk to fire, or turn into fire. It was supposed to help people develop their powers and learn more about their quirks. In previous years it was just a way for Hero students to unofficially audition potential Sidekicks. This year the Power Clubs had ended up forming the core of several super-teams.

I had had a standing invitation to join Pyro Club since my freshman year, but hadn't bothered initially out of principle. And I hadn't bothered after just out of spite. My dad had been in Pyro Club, therefore, I refused to join. I was probably one of the most powerful pyrokinetics in school, but Power Clubs were as much social clubs as scholastic groups. I didn't even like most of the people in them; most of them were preppy, social-climbing jerks. Layla called them elitist, even though I knew she occasionally joined in some of Plant Club's community service projects.

Paul Fierre wasn't as bad as the last three presidents I had dealt with (I had to refuse their invitations to join in person before they'd believe me. And when I refused, I did so rather… spectacularly). He had taken my initial refusal at face value, and he didn't do as much of the false smiling they all had. He didn't try to pretend like we should be friends either, just because we both had fire powers.

His own power was pyromancy, divination through fire. It might have landed him in the Sidekick class; except he had accurately predicted the powers of everyone in the gym during Power Placement, including people he had never met before. And he predicted every car-drop and panel-pop Boomer had tried to pull on him. Boomer had been impressed against his will, and Paul had gone into Hero class.

"Warren! Hey, I had some questions for you, if you wouldn't mind," he asked, looking absolutely serious. Though Paul didn't keep a smile plastered on his face like his predecessors, he usually kept up a cheerful demeanor.

"What?" I asked shortly. I had no idea what he could be wanting from me. Or what any of the other presidents wanted from the rest of us.

"Look, a lot of us seniors… had a lot of trouble adapting when we started these groups at the beginning of the year. I mean; our groups ended up being half Sidekicks, er, rather, _former_ Sidekicks. Principal Powers insisted on that, that we had to integrate our teams. And um… well, we haven't been doing so well in our Gauntlet runs. But obviously _you_ have, and you have _four_ former Sidekicks in your group. And they're obviously doing great for you-," he said breezily, waving his hands as he tried to make some kind of point.

I hadn't even realized that there had been rules about the composition of the super-teams. But when I thought about it, it made sense. The Hero/Sidekick division was still very much with everyone, even though we were slowly trying to move away from that mentality. If people had been left totally on their own to form super-teams, some would have been all Hero-students, and other would have ended up being all Sidekicks. And the Sidekick groups would probably have ended up failing their Gauntlet runs and possibly getting killed out there in the real world.

That, obviously, would _not_ look good for the new system. But former Hero-students apparently just didn't grasp the concept of trying to find ways to make their former Sidekick teammates' powers fit in and be useful. Our group hadn't had any issues with the power level of our group, because we were already half Sidekicks. And we hadn't had issues with our Gauntlet runs because Ethan had been making training programs for all of us.

It was making me a little angry though, that Paul was going on like I had the rest of the group under my thumb. Probably assuming that just because I was a senior (not to mention a senior pyrokinetic, he was a bit of a power snob) I was in charge.

"Why aren't you talking to Coach Boomer if you're having problems?" I asked when he took a breath. He might not be as falsely positive as some, but Paul still had the tendency to babble like a brook.

"Um, well, I was thinking that perhaps, if you like, my group could go up against yours, and maybe you could give my Sidekicks a few tips. Get their confidence up a bit. I mean; _your_ Sidekicks were doing so well on those tapes…" he trailed off a bit as I smiled a very small evil smile. Paul might mean well, but he was an arrogant ass. And he was going to get his team very dead with that attitude. Powers said we had fans; that people looked up to us. That gave us power, but this was power I wasn't afraid to use, Ms. Olsen's lecture notwithstanding. It was time for an attitude adjustment.

"It's not my group. It's Stronghold's group. If you want to schedule Gauntlet time, you talk to him," I said with a straight face. He looked from me to Stronghold in shock.

" _Will Stronghold_ is your team leader? He's just a sophomore!" Paul exclaimed in shock.

"He's the one that defeated Royal Pain. And he's the most powerful kid in the school," I pointed out with patient logic. It took Paul a second to wrap his mind around that concept. "And if you want your… Sidekicks to get better training…" I suddenly had an idea, a very wicked idea. "Hey Popsicle! Do you have a minute?"

Ethan looked over at me and waved, and politely extricated himself from two other presidents, from Water Club and Amorphous Club I thought.

When Ethan walked over to me, I introduced him to Paul and gave him a quick, unseen wink before we started talking.

"How much did you charge us for those training programs you made for _all_ of us?" I asked him. Ethan was a little confused, he knew I was up to something, but I hadn't had time to brief him on my little idea. He was smart though; I knew he'd figure it out.

"Paul needs some help training his _Sidekicks_ ," I said carefully. I saw the lightbulb go off in Ethan's head, and his smothered a grin as he got it.

"Oh, those. Um… twenty dollars… I think," he said tentatively.

"I thought it was forty, I mean, after we started doing the group Gauntlet runs…"

"Oh yeah, that's right. The full training program for a month was forty," he said with more conviction, nodding firmly at Paul.

" _You_ did all the training programs? I… Well, I see. Ah… then on behalf Pyro Club, and of my own group and Anita Vernandez's group, could I hire you to make some programs for us? I… think we need some individual time getting our… kinks worked out before we go up against your group," he said a little hesitantly, though he stuck out his hand for Ethan to shake. The look on his face was priceless; he was so absolutely flabbergasted that little Ethan was responsible for our training…

Ethan shook hands with him to seal the deal, and then wrote out his phone number and e-mail address for Paul on a scrap of paper. We both waited until Paul briefly talked to Will, and then finally left the auditorium before breaking down laughing. Everyone else shot us weird looks, particularly the remaining presidents; I don't think they had ever seen me laugh before.

"Awesome idea Warren," Ethan said when he could breathe again.

"You don't have to do it, let him figure out his own plans," I told him, still snorting a bit.

"Oh no, I'm going to do it. Have you seen anyone else's scores for their Gauntlet runs? I have, I try to keep up on all of them. Ours in the highest, and that's really scary, considering how little experience we have," he informed me. I got over the rest of my laughter in a hurry, and looked at Ethan a little oddly.

"Seriously?" I asked, even though it was very clear Ethan was telling the truth.

"Seriously. And if they _pay_ for my programs, I think they'll be more likely to pay attention and use them. Thanks for suggesting it by the way; I think I would have done it for free if you hadn't said anything. They really do need the help. I think it'll make them better heroes too." With that Ethan gave me a wave and went back off to the other two people he had been talking to.

 _Is it actually possible to outsmart yourself?_ I thought as the rest of our group convened ten minutes later. The presidents had finally trailed out of the auditorium, and Will had a weird expression on his face, somewhere between smug and astonished.

"I think I just filled up our Gauntlet time for the next two weeks," he said, sounding a little dazed. "I have groups from Strength Club, Flight Club, Electric Club… nearly everyone that was here!"

"Pyro Club's going to want to get into the act too, once Ethan finishes with their training programs," I added. Ethan took a second to explain that, much to everyone's amusement.

"Was there anyone who _wasn't_ here? Those are the people I'd be worried about," Magenta pointed out.

"Umm… I don't think anyone from Psychic Club was here, Acid Club, Deceiver Club, or umm… Real-Shifter Club," Layla said after a second. Psychic Club and Acid Club were pretty self-explanatory. Deceiver Club was those that had powers to confuse, like Rob, the Carbon-Copy Kid from Will's class, or others that could create illusions or cloud memories. And Real-Shifter Club was a tiny club of those that could transform themselves or others into non-living things.

Some of the clubs were _very_ tiny and _very_ specific, but as long as you had at least five members, you could claim you had a club. Some kids considered being in a Power Club or two as a mark of status, no matter what type, so there were a truly ridiculous amount of them. The fact that we were only missing four (and maybe a few others from the _really_ obscure end of the spectrum) was pretty impressive.

"Eek. If Psychic Club decides to get mad at us… that could be really, really, really bad," Will said, looking worried.

"I hear you there, man," Zack said with a shake of his head. "We could all end up going-." Zack made a circling gesture near his temple in the sign for crazy.

"So, we go find them and make nice," Magenta said impatiently. "Powers said a lot of people are looking up to us. If they _aren't_ , then they probably think we're a bunch of stuck-up teacher's pets."

"And we can't afford dissention in the ranks once we graduate," Ethan pointed out, straightening his glasses.

"Yeah, crap from school tends to stick with you," I offered. _As I, and the rest of them, have reason to know._

"I have no problem making nice," Will said hurriedly, putting up his hands to stop our half-formed protests.

"Yeah, and after that we have to go kick some senior butt in the Gauntlet!" Zack said enthusiastically.

 _Yup, definitely possible for_ him _to outsmart himself. On an hourly basis,_ I thought with amusement.


	20. Seniors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes: One of my ff.net readers brought up a point that she didn't know what divination had to do with fire, and I realized I had thrown in a slightly obscure bit of history there with Paul Fierre's power. Pyromancy is one of the classic forms of divination; it was what Nostrodamus claimed to use in his predictions of the future. So that's where I pulled that out of. There's your history lesson for today!

"So, who's going to go where?" Will asked. "I have to go talk to Coach Boomer to get our time scheduled."

"What, you don't want to go talk to Elise?" Magenta asked with a smirk. Elise Preston was the president of Psychic Club, another telepath like Ms. Olsen.

"Uh… I'd do it, but um…" Will temporized.

"You'd rather stick a needle in your eye than talk to a pissed-off mind-reader?" I supplied.

"…Yeah," Will said a little uneasily.

"Fine. I'll talk to her," I offered.

"Me too," Layla said. "It'll look better if we both do."

"I'll take Deceivers then," Magenta said with a sigh.

"I have Real-Shifters," Ethan volunteered.

"Uh… Then I guess I'm on Acid Club," Zack said with a shrug.

 _I rather thought you'd like to get this straightened out right away. Miss Preston is standing outside the auditorium, Miss Evans, Mr. Peace,_ Ms. Olsen's voice echoed in my head, and by everyone else's reactions, they were hearing something similar.

 _Don't do that again_ , I thought carefully. I really, really didn't like the idea of her being able to drop in mentally whenever she felt like it.

 _But it's so much more efficient than to have you come back to class then send you all out again,_ she returned reasonably.

 _Not used to this,_ I replied.

 _Of course you aren't. Don't let Elise try to mind-read you, I'm her faculty advisor and if I hear of it I'm going to have to do something official about it,_ she warned.

 _What, we get leverage now?_ I asked, surprised.

 _Oh no, Elise knows that already. It's just you should too before you confront her. She's rather… proud._ With that, the uncanny sensation of Ms. Olsen's presence vanished. I exchanged a look with Layla.

"I heard it too. Brrr… that's creepy," she said with a quick shiver. "I really don't like it when she does that."

"You and everyone else too," Will said quickly, giving her a little hug.

"Let's get this over with," I said, and the rest of the group scattered. Layla and I found Elise where Ms. Olsen said she would be, just outside the auditorium, sitting on a desk the hall monitors had used to check attendance from.

"So, I'm glad you finally decided to come see me," Elise said coolly from her perch on the desk.

"I didn't know we were being timed," I said a little sarcastically. Layla shot me a look that clearly said _Play nice_ , and I yielded the floor to her.

"We wanted to ask you if any of the groups from Psychic Club would spare us some Gauntlet time. We really need the experience in going up against people with mental powers," she said politely. Elise looked at us both for a very long minute. I didn't feel anything like when Ms. Olsen had been trying to poke in my head, but I was keeping my mental walls up anyway. From the look of fierce concentration on Layla's face, she was doing the same.

"Just like that. Never even looked at us or spoke to us the entire year and now you want our help?" she asked with a superior little smirk.

"I don't recall insulting you. So why be so hostile?" I asked her evenly. She was being ridiculously self-righteous for someone that we hadn't interacted with at all.

"Hostile? Oh, that barely begins to cover it," she said sweetly. Layla was just looking at her oddly.

"Um… Elise? You and everyone else in your group is a senior. We're sophomores. We don't run in the same circles at all. We don't take any classes together. We don't have any gym time together. We just… never really had any chance to meet you or anyone else in Psychic Club. We weren't ignoring you or anything," Layla pointed out carefully. Elise rolled her eyes.

"We didn't want to be seen sucking up to sophomores, if you don't mind," she admitted testily. "I think you would understand if I didn't want to be labeled another one of your 'groupies.'"

"Try again. You didn't need to insult us. We're all on the same side," I countered. Elise looked at me bitterly.

"People tend to discount those of us with power they can't see. We're second-class Heroes at best and Sidekicks at worst. Your group, with all your flash and glamour, managed to worm your way into Coach Boomer's good graces. My group would have the best runs in the school if he would let us play to our strengths instead of scoring us like _your_ team!" she snapped.

"You're sore at us because Boomer is a blockhead?" Layla asked, incredulous.

"How else would you have gotten chosen for a real mission unless he recommended you? Blockhead or not, Principal Powers still listens to him!" she yelled.

"It was because Will figured out what was going on and Boomer overheard us talking about it," I said quickly before she could get any more wound up. Elise stopped, looking as shocked as if I had just slapped her in the face. Her face went red, then white, then red again, as her mouth worked silently.

"That's the truth," Layla said firmly. Elise's color finally stabilized, which was good, because any redder or paler and I was sure she was either going to have a stroke or faint.

"Will Stronghold figured out Royal Pain's plot," she repeated very carefully, almost to herself. "This is humiliating."

"Look, Boomer didn't think Zack, Ethan, or Magenta were going to be able to keep up with Will, Layla, and me, but they did, and even Boomer had to admit that eventually. If you think you have some killer strategies, then let's schedule some time together and you can whip us up and down the Gauntlet until even Boomer can't deny your inherent coolness," I offered, trying to keep the sarcasm down to an acceptable level.

Elise gave me a death glare to match one of my own, and finally nodded.

"Fine. Friday, eleven o'clock," she said shortly, and left. Layla and I exchanged troubled glances before heading back to Ms. Olsen's classroom.

* * *

Zack and Will were already there, and we gave them a quick run-down of our little run-in with Elise.

"I'll make sure the time's free," Will said quickly, scratching a note down on a calendar Boomer had apparently given him. "So… she was pretty mad?"

"Give her nails and she would have spit out tacks. If she had had my powers, we would have both been crisped," I opined. Layla nodded in complete agreement.

"Well, at least Acid Club wasn't so bad. Quinton Nguyen's their president, he just said he was gonna catch us later. 'Cause he just forgot. No biggie there," Zack said with a shrug.

"That's a small blessing," Layla said with a bit more cheer. Just at that moment Magenta and Ethan returned, her looking amused, him looking perturbed.

"Did you know Deceivers' Club and Real-Shifters' Club work together?" Magenta opened without preamble. Everyone looked at each other in confusion and shook their heads.

"We go hunting them down, and we run into Coach Boomer. He asks us to come with him, so we say fine, thinking maybe needed to double-check our schedules or something. Then he goes into an empty classroom-."

"Which wasn't exactly empty," Ethan cut in.

"It was Rob?" Zack asked.

"Yeah, it was Rob. Apparently it's some kind of stupid initiation hazing to actually _find_ the presidents. Half the objects in the room were actually people, and then there were another half-dozen or so that were invisible, mind-blanking themselves from us, or camouflaged. It really annoyed the snot out of them when I shifted and sniffed them out," Magenta said in mingled annoyance and triumph.

"So… they didn't show up because they thought that would be funny to do that?" Will asked, incredulously. Ethan nodded.

"They're willing to set up some time later. Much later. Like after we've gone up against everyone else, so they have time to study us," Ethan explained.

"This is going to be really ugly isn't it?" Zack asked. No one could disagree with him there.

* * *

"You're thinking very hard," Mom said from my doorway. I had my head in my hands, trying to figure out how finish up Ms. Olsen's essay, and was getting a headache for my troubles.

"Was it that obvious?" I asked a little sarcastically. My temper was not the greatest, not after today, and not considering what was on the horizon.

"Very. It's about class isn't it? Your teacher?" she asked. If I hadn't been so used to her pulling that kind of information out of me I might have snapped at her, what with all the mind-readers I had been around today.

"Ms. Olsen," I allowed. "She tries to mind-read us during class, and talks to us telepathically. And after the assembly today, I had to go talk to the president of Psychic Club."

"And you really haven't had to use those mental walls they taught you since freshman year," Mom finished.

"Yeah," I agreed, rubbing my temples slightly, wondering if there was any way I could figure out how to use my healing power on myself for things like this. My indestructibility didn't seem to work on stress headaches.

"If you haven't used them, it takes concentration to keep them up. And the harder you concentrate, the worse your headache is going to get until you get experience. Would you like to try doing this from a different angle?" she offered. I turned around, a grateful look on my face.

"Absolutely."

"Some of the meditation techniques I used when I was first learning how to control my powers might work with what you're trying to do," she offered. I tried to suppress a snort at the thought of me meditating.

"What do I have to do?" I asked instead. We were going up against Psychic Club in another two days, and instead of bitching and moaning and giving myself more headaches in my paranoia to keep them out of my mind, I might at well _try_ to do something about it.

"Take a seat on the floor here…" she said, and I sat cross-legged. What followed after that was an oddly soothing hour of very weird instructions. Most people used mental images of still ponds, raindrops, or babbling brooks to help clear their minds, but Mom had me use embers, candlelight, or the fire in a fireplace as calming visions.

"Not _tame_ , or contained, because I think you'd eventually rebel inside at that. But ordered, fire at _your_ command, something that works _with_ you," she explained at one point. A lot of what she said didn't exactly make sense to my head, at least consciously, but I felt a lot more relaxed when I finally opened my eyes.

"I should have done this a long time ago," I said after a second.

"The last thing you want to do is _force_ someone to meditate. 'Relax, or else,' doesn't exactly work. I'd rather it have worked out this way," she said. "Is your head feeling better?" I considered that a minute before realizing that it was.

"Why didn't everyone else have headaches?" I asked as I got up off the floor. Mom looked at me thoughtfully a moment before saying anything.

"You have more you want to hide," she explained simply. "I don't doubt that they _do_ have headaches, but they aren't trying to hide as much as you." I raised an eyebrow at that.

"So if I wore my heart on my sleeve I'd be fine?"

"I should start stockpiling ibuprofen, shouldn't I?" Mom asked with resignation.

"Yeah."

"Oh, there was something else I wanted to let you know. The Bureau assigned me to be at the school board meeting when Veronica has to answer questions from the parents and board members," she commented.

"I hope they're paying you double time for that. It's going to be… interesting," I said with a somewhat tired laugh.

"Well, I have all your friends' parents on my side. With Steve and Josie up there, I think we'll be able to quell any attempts at panicking."

* * *

Principal Powers luckily didn't ask us to be at the board meeting, for which we were all profoundly grateful. It didn't stop us from getting the complete low-down on it from our parents though. They all had to attend, both as sort of our proxies, as well as the voices of reason.

"It went better than I had hoped," Mom told me late after the meeting. "We had a nice big therapeutic screaming session at the beginning so people could get their feelings out in the open, and then spent the rest of it wrangling peoples' reactions back down to a normal level.

"I have to say, Veronica is a pretty astute politician. She actually kept the crowd in some semblance of order, so at least we didn't have to take over from her at any point. She had boiled down everyone's reactions to a few choice objections and just kept knocking them down over and over until they understood."

"Lemme guess: 'They're too young to fight.' 'They can't fight these sickos!' And 'Why didn't you let us know sooner?'" I asked. Mom laughed.

"Dead in the black. Of course, the fact that most of them have told their kids how much they're looking forward to fighting alongside them kind of helped silence the first. The fact that _we_ don't get to pick what kind of 'sickos' we fight silenced the second. And Veronica explained the third," she said. "Of course, I still think there's going to be a _lot_ of interference from them when Royal Pain's students finally hit the scene. And if Cutter's Crew shows their faces again I think they're going to get a Parental Superhero Smackdown, assuming your parents manage to find them first."

"So… kind of what you expected?" I asked.

"A little. There was a lot less panic than I thought there would be, but I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of backlash. The school board was going to fire Veronica on the spot to appease the parents. But Director Adams objected, and they had to table it." I choked at that.

"The director was at the meeting?" I asked, surprised.

"He had to be. This is too big for even the principal of Sky High to deal with. Firing Veronica would be nothing more than a political gesture and wouldn't do anything to help the school. So Director Adams was there to… remind people of the realities of the situation," she explained. "This is going to get rather ugly, I'm afraid. I've been reassigned to Maxville until this either blows over or gets back to manageable proportions."

I winced at that. My mom being as powerful as she was had to mean that this was far more than ugly. But at least it was in good hands.

* * *

Friday, eleven o'clock, our third Power Club Gauntlet session this week, and the one I was least looking forward to. Wednesday had been groups from both Strength Club and Flight Club, sessions that left us all in sweat-soaked exhaustion, but weren't terribly difficult. We were still allowed to use some of our gear in the Gauntlet now, and Zack's light-bombs still gave us a pretty big edge. With the armor we were all wearing, I didn't have to be quite so careful about how I hit people with my fire either. We couldn't play the defensive game all the time, and that meant I was back to flinging fireballs instead of using the fire ring.

Once blinded by Zack, the super-strong, indestructible, or otherwise impervious guys from Strength Club were easy targets for Ethan and Magenta's stun caps, Layla's vine-bindings, or my own fireballs. Of course, because of their very strength they didn't stay down for long and we ended up doing a lot of repeated tagging. That, of course, was between dodging and taking punches of prodigious strength. None of them were as strong as Will, but I still got the dubious pleasure of going through more than one wall that day, while trying to protect the others from hard hits.

Flight Club was a little harder, but only a few of them were anywhere near Will's speed or maneuverability. Will could fly at super-sonic speeds and stop and turn on a dime. Most of them were a lot slower or clumsier in the air. Some could only levitate a short distance off the ground, or needed to grow wings or shapeshift entirely to fly, which meant they had to pay attention to wind currents and the space they took up a lot more than Will did. I actually ended up taking a bigger role in that fight, teaming up with Will to drive them towards the earth so Layla could bind them, and Zack, Ethan, and Magenta could stun them. Flinging fireballs from the top of the Gauntlet room with Will flying me was definitely cool.

Amorphous Club gave us our first big run for our money though on Thursday. That club had people in it that took no real fixed form when they shifted. One girl could turn into mist, one guy into smoke, another into a swarm of bees… One girl could even turn herself into bubbles. Soap bubbles. Like the kind you blew out of a plastic wand in your backyard in summertime. None of them could be blinded while shifted, Layla really couldn't bind mist or smoke or bees or bubbles with her vines, and there wasn't anything really for Ethan or Magenta to stun. Will literally couldn't get a hand on them, and any damage I could do to them was really minor, as they could just roll with my fireballs.

On the other hand, it was a lot harder for them to do stuff to us. Bee-girl was really the one that worried us the most, but Will and I were too tough for her to affect, Ethan couldn't be hurt while melted, and Layla wove a very thick vine-mat to protect everyone else. Smoke-guy or mist-girl could have suffocated any of us, but they were apparently somewhat reluctant to force themselves down our throats, for which we were all profoundly grateful. That session degenerated into all of us running around trying to avoid each other while simultaneously capture each other, all very ineffectually. I'm sure Boomer found it very hilarious, as he didn't stop the run for a good fifteen minutes.

Friday though was our big day. Elise Preston and her group of seniors from Psychic Club was ready and lined up on the starting line of the Gauntlet almost ten minutes early to introduce themselves. The formal introductions Boomer was allowing because most of the gang didn't know the seniors.

"Elise Preston, major telepath," she said formally, with an odd little bow. "This is Zoë, she's a major telekinetic. Robin, she's a minor telekinetic. Chris, he's a remote viewer. Tracy, she's an astral projector. Justin, he's a psysicker." With that she took a few steps back, and the rest of her group gave us small, simultaneous nods. Then they all turned and retreated back to the fortress; they were the defenders today.

 _Creepy…_ I thought. I had had my mental walls up and up hard since I geared up. Ethan just had a thoughtful look on his face as they walked away.

"What do you got?" Will asked hopefully.

"Robin, Chris, and Justin were all Sidekicks, I'm pretty sure. I believe Elise calling her a minor telekinetic means Robin can't move too much weight, so she might just be backing up Zoë or acting as a distraction. Chris' power means he can see what's going on at a distance-."

"So we can't sneak up on these guys at all?" Magenta asked, looking irritated. Her powers worked best when she could get the drop on someone. Ethan shook his head reluctantly and Magenta scowled.

"Justin… is kind of an anti-healer," he explained, and I raised an eyebrow. "He can make people think they're sick, and then their bodies lower their resistance and then they actually _do_ get sick. It takes some time to work though, days, which is why he was a Sidekick.

"Tracy's power is kind of rare… she can basically separate her psychic self from her body. She'll be incorporeal, like a ghost almost, so she'll be able to pass through walls and even fly. But if anyone messes with her physical body while she's projecting, it'll snap her back to reality right away," Ethan explained.

"So what can she do when she's all ghostified?" Zack asked.

"She can see and hear what's going on in other places. And… if she's strong-willed enough… she could possess someone," Ethan said quickly. Everyone made annoyed and exasperated noises and I cursed mentally. "I don't know if she'll want to, that's really, really hard to do, but I think she's capable."

"Well… what's our strategy?" Magenta asked, resignation on her voice.

"Speed," Will said, looking over at Ethan. "Since they know exactly where we're going to be, let's go fast and hard. I fly everyone to the top of vault, punch the ceiling in, and we go in from above. Zoë can protect everyone from the debris, so I think we'll be ok there."

Since Boomer had stated we had to incapacitate our defenders, not kill them, that was a legitimate concern. Despite the safety measures in the Gauntlet, it was possible to "kill" your defenders, which would give Psychic Club the win by default. Boomer had done a number on the safety measures since Zack's fall, including installing null-grav nets to catch debris and people that were hurling where they shouldn't. But despite that, he wouldn't activate them unless there was a real, genuine need. Zoë would have to at least _try_ to deflect the ceiling pieces with her powers, or Boomer would call a disqualification on her whole team for passively accepting "death" in order to win.

"So, you take out the ceiling, Layla brings vines in for us to climb down and bind people?" Ethan asked, and Layla nodded. "Zack throws the light bomb right before we go down, and then we start stunning. Warren stays up as back up in case things so south, ok?"

We all nodded. I was the only one with a long-range power, barring Layla, but since Layla would be otherwise occupied, and Will was, as usual, barred from touching the defenders, I was the logical choice.

"Mental walls stay up," I added forcefully, and everyone nodded enthusiastically.

"What do we do if someone goes crazy?" Zack asked. We all looked at each other for a second.

"Physical pain tends to override mental compulsion. So if someone goes crazy, slap them," Ethan said.

"Seriously?" Will asked.

"I can cite you at least a dozen battles in which-," Ethan started.

"No, no, no, that's fine," Will said quickly, before Ethan could get into Champion Debate mode.

" _Are you kids about done yapping? I haven't got all day!"_ Boomer yelled as us from up in the tower. Will sighed and gave him the start sign. Layla's face was already a mask of concentration as she waited, because she had to be quick…

The buzzer rang and Layla quickly grew her ivy bracelet into a harness around Will, something we could all grab onto for the quick trip. Will couldn't get all of us into his arms, not even if we were willing to put up with the indignity of being carried like a baby. The vine-harness gave us all something to hold onto while he flew, minus Magenta, who was securely tucked into Zack's jacket pocket.

"Go," Ethan said, once we were all secure. Will lifted off and soared for the fortress, the ground flashing by at a dizzying pace. Boomer had stopped being irked at Will for bypassing all the obstacles on the Gauntlet once we started going up against other students and teachers, otherwise I might have feared for our free time.

We were going to be hitting the roof in under thirty seconds, but I was already feeling a faint pressure on my mind.

"Walls," I reminded everyone again, and tried to bring a little of the calm centeredness Mom had taught me into my firewall. Expressions of fierce concentration crossed everyone's faces again as Will dropped down to the roof. We stood off a respectful distance while he drew his fist back and pulverized the fortress roof. Dust and debris flew everywhere, and a few cries of outrage from below told us that our first trick had worked.

Will's vine-harness dropped off his body and began to anchor itself in the roof as Layla directed it, giving people a place to climb down, even as chunks of debris began to fling themselves back _out_ of the hole in the roof.

 _Oops_ , I thought faintly, powering up and flinging fireballs at the ones small enough to be deflected, and dodging out of the way of larger ones. Will took to the sky again, smashing the biggest pieces even as Layla redirected her vines to shield her, Zack, and Magenta from the worst of it. Ethan simply melted, got thunked by rocks a few times, and then flowed around them to clearer ground.

"Zack, now!" Will called. Nothing happened, and I took my arm down from my face to see what the hold-up was. Zack was standing still, slack-jawed, his eyes half-open, swaying slightly on his feet.

" _Magenta, snap him out of it!"_ I roared, getting closer to the hole in the roof. Either Zack had just gotten concussed by a rock, or someone had him under mental compulsion of some type. If it was the latter, then whoever it was was going to get a fireball right to the chest.

"Ow! What the hell did you do that for?" I heard Zack yell behind me. _Yup, nothing like a sharp set of guinea pig teeth to shake your mind out of a trance._

"Zack, now!" Will repeated, and this time I saw the little light-bomb go sailing over the edge of the hole. We shielded ourselves as the white light exploded, and I felt Layla's vines crawl past me to return to being ropes again.

Zack (with Magenta) and Ethan scrambled for the hole and the vine ropes before the glare was entirely gone, wanting to get their feet on firm ground before Elise's group could recover. Will, Layla, and I were on our knees at the hole's edge, each waiting to do our part. As the glare faded and Zack's own brilliant glowing took over, we could finally see our "enemies."

Elise and Zoë were standing in front of Tracy's limb body and Chris' kneeling one, which bore out that it was probably Tracy, in astral form, who had managed to distract Zack. Chris must have been helping feed Zoë our locations on the roof, even though she couldn't see us from below. _Elise must be in communication with them all_ , I realized, which would account for the fact we hadn't heard much out of them. Robin and Justin were in the front line, Robin's hands stretched out to the sides, Justin's clasped in front of him.

All of their eyes were watering something fierce, and the unfocused quality of their gaze told me they were as blind as most of our opponents were. But why did they look so ready… _Oh crap,_ I realized suddenly.

"They can see us!" I cried.

"Chris can see us!" Ethan said almost simultaneously, jumping off his vine rope and melting at the same time.

To prove that we were right, more bits of ceiling debris began to fling themselves around the room, missing Ethan, but several thudding into Zack's tall frame. A few pained squeaks from Zack's pocket told us Magenta had taken some hits too, and she escaped from his pocket and dashed under some cover. Zack dashed to the side, limping, pulling out his stun ray as he did. Boomer had invoked the unwritten rules on us again, barring Will, Layla, and I from carrying weapons into the Gauntlet, but let the other three use them if they wanted too. Chris either didn't see it or the others couldn't react to it right away, because Zack managed to get off a few shots, most missing wildly, but one almost hitting Chris. I'm sure that was mostly by accident.

Chris stiffened in surprised, and I'm sure would have had Zoë hurl more rocks at us, but soon had other things to worry about. Almost simultaneous with Zack's shooting came fireballs from me and writhing vines from Layla. Her vines seem to hit an invisible wall when they came within a few feet of the defenders, and I heard Layla muttering something uncomplimentary under her breath. My fire managed to get through, crashing at Zoë's feet and causing her to yelp in surprise. Layla's vines whipped in closer as Zoë lost control momentarily, but stopped again a few inches from her face. Layla's brow creased in concentration, and a silent battle of wills broke out.

The pressure on my mind suddenly increased as Elise suddenly focused her attention on me. A headache began to build behind my eyes even as I tried to throw my fire in her direction, the pain making my eyes swim and throwing off my aim. Ethan resolidified below, in cover behind some of the denser rubble, his stun ray out and pointed at Elise. To my amazement, I saw his stun-ray begin to shake, the lift from his hand, zipping across to Robin's.

"Frell!" Ethan exclaimed, and melted as Robin returned fire with her new toy, missing him. Zack fired a few more times, dropping down behind cover this time, still missing but getting closer. I fiercely tried to force Elise out of my head, concentrating so hard I almost missed Will's move. With an astonishment that broke through my pain, I saw Will casually fly down through the hole and come to stand in front of Justin. He reached out and grabbed Will's unresisting hand, doing _something_ to him.

Pain was a solid bar across my eyes from trying to keep Elise out, and I had practically lost my fire in my attempt to focus on my mental struggle.

" _Tracy again!"_ I yelled finally, trying to focus enough to get a fireball thrown at Will to snap him out of her spell.

With a squeak of pure outrage from below, I realized I had almost forgotten Magenta. Hidden and unnoticed, overlooked by Chris, she had worked her away around behind them. A sharp nip to Tracy suddenly dropped her out of her trance, and a startled Will took to the sky again as she unshifted. A sharp _whump_ from Magenta's stun-ray felled Chris, and a second blast felled Tracy within a second of each other. Then again she couldn't really miss at point-blank range.

"Surrender or I will stun your rock-throwing ass halfway into next week!" she snarled at Zoë, pointing the stun-ray threateningly. Magenta was going to have a spectacular black eye at the very least from whatever hits she took while in Zack's pocket.

The other four members of Elise's group, totally blind now without Chris to see for them, still seemed pretty reluctant to give up. Zoë was still holding off Layla's vines, and Robin, blinded or not, still had a stun-ray. Justin apparently couldn't do anything unless he was touching someone, so that put him out of the picture for now. Elise's pressure on my mind wasn't letting up, and I was beginning to realize how she meant to turn the tide. All she needed was my help. If she could get into my head, she might be able to see through my eyes… or force me to turn on my teammates.

"Ew, ew, ew!!!!" Robin exclaimed suddenly, startling all of us. Ethan, still in his puddle form, had come out of hiding and wrapped himself around both of her ankles, binding her and throwing her off. Apparently Robin didn't like that so much, and wildly pointed her stun-ray in Ethan's direction. Before anyone could stop her, she got off a shot- stunning herself and missing Ethan entirely. Will actually laughed at that, and Elise turned an interesting shade of scarlet. The pressure in my head finally lifted a hair.

"Zack!" I called, and he took a few more wild shots with his stun-ray, adding to the general air of chaos and confusion. He was getting marginally better with every shot, and it was clear _eventually_ he was going to hit someone, and the odds were much better of him hitting one of Elise's group than Ethan or Magenta.

"I'd surrender if I were you. The Super Guinea Pig o' Doom doesn't take prisoners!" he called out. Elise's color deepened as she heard the faint crackle of my flames above her when I powered up again. I was precisely two seconds away from forcing her surrender when the pressure on my mind vanished completely and the rest of her group raised their hands in surrender.

"Good run," Will said cheerfully to them after the rest of the group had come out of stun-reaction. We all had to walk off the Gauntlet course together to report to Boomer. Elise just glared at him.

"Once bitten, twice shy. We're going to beat you next time," she said with a touch of arrogance.

"I'm sure you will," Layla said agreeably. "It was a near thing. You and Chris working together really made a good team."

"Thanks," Chris said softly, offering Layla a shy smile. "We'd practiced that a little, considering what we saw in Wednesday's assembly."

"Definitely good tactics," Ethan was saying, simultaneously writing things down in a notebook while he walked.

"What did you even do to me anyway?" Will was asking Justin and Tracy both.

"Ah, something we worked out with some guys from Deceivers' Club. Um, basically I got you within Justin's reach, and he tried to psysick you," she explained. "He's trying to get faster with his powers, but people don't exactly let him practice a lot, you know?"

I felt an odd moment of empathy with Justin. _He can't practice because his powers make people sick. I can't practice because my powers make people well. How's that for irony?_

"So, I'm supposed to get sick?" Will asked, sounding a little alarmed.

"I'm not too sure how it works on people like you. I've done it on a few guys from Strength Club, but sometimes it doesn't take on them," he said with a shrug. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't seem to be able to do much worse than a cold."

"Uh… sure, I guess," Will said a little uncertainly. "I mean, that's your power, you have to practice sometime. I can handle a cold I guess." Justin gave him a lopsided sympathetic smile.

"And your walls weren't that bad for a non-pyschic," Tracy piped up. "Seriously, astral projection possession is mostly a temporary body takeover. I don't have to get through your walls so much as get _around_ them."

"Huh… Ok, I don't feel quite so stupid now," Will said, nodding.

"The other psychics laughed a bit, but Elise was still scowling.

"Should I even ask what you were trying to do there near the end?" I inquired. She shot a sharp glance at me.

"Trying to get my omnipotent eye back, if you hadn't minded. But obviously you did, and were being a stubborn jerk about it," she snapped.

"And I was just supposed to open my mind for you to do as you liked? No thanks," I said calmly. She was just sore she had lost, and was already plotting our future humiliating defeats. I had a sneaking suspicion there were going to be a lot more headaches all the way around the next time we ran against her group.


	21. Side Effects

_Four o'clock. Who would be calling me at four o'clock on a Sunday night? Our study session isn't even until seven._ I asked myself, flipping open my ringing phone without even looking.

"Hello?"

"Warred? Id's be," a thick voice said on the other end. _Huh? What the hell does that mean?_ I checked the caller ID: Will.

"Will?" I asked uncertainly.

"Yeah. Hey, I wadded do dell you I can'd be ad the study session tonide ad your house."

"What's wrong with you?" I asked.

"I hab a code! I can'd breed oud of by dose, whad does id sownd like?" It took me a second to translate that.

"You have a cold and can't breathe out of your nose?" I asked just to be sure.

"Yeah! Thad's whad I jus said!"

"Fine, whatever. I'll be over in a minute," I said. _Looks like Justin's power actually worked._

"Whad?"

"You're being an idiot. You can't miss tonight's session, not with your grades Stronghold."

"Bud Im'b sick!"

"And _who_ do you have for a friend?" I reminded him pointedly. I remembered Tobias' words, that I should be able to even heal people with diseases. And despite the trouble my new powers were causing me, I wanted to see if I really could, given the chance. A cold probably wasn't the best of things to start with, but at least I couldn't hurt Will if I screwed up.

"Uh… sure. I bean, if you wad do," he said diffidently. I snapped the phone shut and grabbed my jacket for the short walk to Stronghold's house.

I was a little nervous, but was trying to go through every calming exercise I could think of to prepare myself. One of the bad things about having to conceal my powers was that I couldn't practice very much. If I hadn't had to stay under the radar, Ethan might have tried to get me into a hospital to test my powers under all kinds of different circumstances.

Perversely, I was kind of glad that wasn't the case. Tobias had said he'd tell people I could only heal those I cared for. I knew that wasn't strictly true; I had healed Penny after all. Though… I had been feeling really sorry for her at the time. But still, I didn't _want_ to use my powers on random strangers. The very idea weirded me out a lot.

Maybe I was just selfish. Despite the fact that my friends considered me the original source of all advice, I truly had no desire to start intervening in other peoples' lives. Sure, I heard plenty of woe around me in the cafeteria, but I never wanted to turn around and offer people advice about their problems. Not that they'd accept it from _me,_ provided they didn't faint or run away first.

Weren't healers supposed to be self-sacrificing? That was what my great-great-grandmother had been, self-sacrificing until it killed her. I wasn't _entirely_ selfish either, I didn't think. I was going to be a superhero, and for _that_ I had no problem laying my life on the line to help others. Was it because typical hero work was going to be in the heat of the moment, not at someone's bedside? Was I only heroic under stress? When it "counted?" Uncomfortable thoughts indeed. Then again, maybe a little selfishness would be useful, so I _didn't_ end up like great-great-grandma.

I got to the Stronghold's back door, opening it with my own key. Mrs. Stronghold had given all of us our own keys a few months ago, telling us she trusted us enough to give us the run of the house. It really touched me a lot, though I hadn't shown it at the time.

"Warren? Good afternoon dear. Didn't Will call and tell you he's sick?" Mrs. Stronghold asked as I walked into the kitchen. She stood at the sink, rinsing off some potatoes, and could only nod in greeting.

"That's why I came," I offered obliquely.

"Oh?" she raised an eyebrow in understanding. "Well… if you're sure. He wouldn't mind a little company. Layla was here earlier, but Will wouldn't let her in the room. He was afraid she'd get sick and then blame him."

"Layla's kind of grumpy when she's sick," I pointed out, and Mrs. Stronghold laughed.

"Don't we all know it? Well, you know where his room is," she said, pointing towards the stairs with her chin. I tromped upstairs, hearing the coughing and sneezing coming from Stronghold's room long before I came to it.

Will was propped up in bed with a bolster pillow, used tissues scattered around him in snowdrifts and a huge plastic mug of iced juice on his nightstand. He looked horrible, with a red nose and eyes, and hair sticking up in all direction.

"Hey Warred. Uh, you sure you wadda comb id here? I don'd wadda make you sick too."

"I'm indestructible," I reminded him. "I don't get sick. Ever."

"Nod fair," he groused, making a face. I merely smirked.

"So, this is Justin's fault, you think?"

"He tode be id mighd hab a delayed effegt, if id would worg ad all. Id's stupid, I cad bedch-press the school bud still ged a code from somethig lig thad," he said exasperatedly.

"Yeah, life's just so unfair, isn't it?" I asked rhetorically, pulling up a chair next to the bed. Will shoveled a snowdrift of tissues into a wastepaper basket, and then hesitated.

"You readdy wadda try do heal be?" he asked uncertainly. "I thoughd you said you didn't do the liddle stuff very well."

"If it doesn't work, at least I can't hurt you. I just want to see if I can," I explained, trying to quell my nervousness again. Will just shrugged.

"Fide wid be. I'd just be happy to be able to breed oud of my dose agaid. You deed be to do adythig?"

"Nope, just sit back and chill," I said with a casualness I really wasn't feeling. "Just tell me to stop if it gets painful." Will flopped back on the pillow and watched me. I slowly reached out and put on hand on his chest, closing my eyes and concentrating hard for the feeling of wrongness that would let me know what was going on.

It was faint, but definitely there, and the ember-fire began to flicker along my hand. It was like when Magenta was poisoned, but the shadow of sickness was much, much less against the fire of Will's life. Obviously, he wasn't inadvertently suffering from a fatal illness that just _looked_ like a cold. Good for him, difficult for me.

I kept breathing carefully, remembering what my mom had been teaching me, and began to slowly burn away the shadow. It was just like feeding my regular fire, except I had to watch it in my mind's eye rather than my real eyes. The vague shadow was tenacious, and I found myself pouring more and more power into the flame to burn it away. The flame was beginning to flare bright and clear when I suddenly felt a huge thump.

I shook myself out of my self-imposed trance and realized I was on the opposite side of the room, with Will's dresser now having an inappropriately close relationship with my spine. Shortly after I realized that, _then_ it began to hurt.

"What the hell did you do that for Stronghold?" I demanded, prying myself out of the furniture. Then I finally looked at him. Will was a bright tomato red, breathing heavily, sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands.

"I told you to stop, but you couldn't hear me. I was burning up," he gasped. He grabbed the mug on his nightstand and drained it in a few big gulps, and his color immediately went a few shades paler. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit you so hard."

"I can take it…" I said, slowly standing up, testing to make sure all my limbs still worked. "At least you didn't send me through the wall this time, or break your furniture."

"Yeah, I'm getting better at that," Will said, laughing. "Mom would have killed me if I hadn't."

"Are you ok? Seriously, I hadn't thought…" I trailed off. Will paused for a second and took a deep breath in through his nose.

"Yup, definitely better. Hey, it worked!" he said with a half-smile.

"What are you two _doing_ up here?" Mrs. Stronghold demanded, flinging the door open. She looked from me, next to the displaced dresser, to Will, sitting on his bed, and crossed her arms for an explanation.

"Um… it worked?" I offered.

"Totally! Look," Will said, offering a demonstration of his newly rediscovered ability to breathe again. Mrs. Stronghold smiled a bit and went over to take a look at him. But when she put her hand on his forehead, she jerked back like he had just burned her.

"Will, you're burning up!" she accused.

"It's a side effect," I jumped in quickly. Mrs. Stronghold turned a stern gaze on me, and then leaned back over her son.

"Will, go take a cool shower or something, get your temperature down," she said, and Will quickly hopped off of the bed and disappeared down the hall, mouthing _Thanks_ behind his mom's back. Mrs. Stronghold just looked at me, a look that said very clearly I wasn't going to get out of here in one piece. I gulped.

"There are side effects to this new power of yours?" she asked quietly.

"I wasn't really sure. I hadn't tried to heal something like this before," I tried to explain.

"Will was an _experiment?"_ she demanded. _Oh crap, now I'm in for it._

"I… asked him if I could try. He knew I hadn't done this before. I figured I couldn't hurt him if-," I started to say.

"Couldn't hurt him? Warren, you-," she sighed. "I've been married to Steve for over twenty years. And despite the fact that I know he can turn giant meteors into dust or take out giant robots in a single punch, I know he isn't completely impervious. And when there's something he isn't impervious to, he's just as fragile as a regular person. He _can_ get sick. And so can Will."

" _Mom! Stop giving him a hard time!"_ Will yelled from down the hall. Mrs. Stronghold looked out the door and then back at me. Her expression softened a bit.

"I didn't know," I tried to explain.

"Warren… I appreciate you being willing to help us out, particularly when, well, it could get you into trouble. I didn't mean to snap, it's just… Things are difficult now. I'm sure your mother told you how the school board meeting went. All of us parents are on edge," she tried to explain.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I just… I never get a chance to practice unless it's on my friends. I would rather figure out what kinds of side effects it has _now_ than during a fight. Besides, this is from our last Gauntlet session. Do you know Justin Thompson? He's a psysicker, and he tagged Will on Friday morning." Mrs. Stronghold pursed her lips at that.

"All right, I'll forgive you for that," she said finally, and I relaxed a bit. "Don't get cocky," she added in a warning tone, and I nodded quickly.

"I won't," I told her sincerely. Mrs. Stronghold finally smiled at me.

"It's a rare power you have," she started. I shook my head at her before she could go any further, and she cocked her head to the side in inquiry.

"Don't," I said quietly. "I just… I don't like it when people look at me that way. Like I can fix everything."

"Why Warren? I could guess why you'd be uncomfortable with… your pyrokinesis-."

"With my _dad's_ powers," I said, saying what I knew she didn't want to say.

"Ok then, I could guess why'd you be uncomfortable with your dad's powers, but why this? All of you kids talk about your powers all the time when you're studying over here, everyone but you, unless you're talking about tactics for your Gauntlet runs. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I was just curious," she said, gazing at me frankly behind her glasses.

I looked down at the floor for a second, and then sat down in Will's computer chair.

"You know what's funny? I'm not even afraid of my dad's powers anymore, not since Will and I became friends. I'm afraid of this though," I said, letting the ember-flames play along one hand briefly. "Aren't healers supposed to be nice people? Want to help everyone in pain? I don't. I can't. I… hate it when people look at me like they… want _pieces_ of me. It's worse than the looks I get when people know who my dad is."

I had no idea why I was telling her these things; this was more like something I'd tell my own mom. These _were_ things I had told my own mom. She had been kind of enigmatic when I had told her, which told _me_ she had some kind of plan. Like maybe having me figure it out on my own would be better than anything she could say.

Mrs. Stronghold gave me a kind of sad smile and walked over to kneel down so she was at eye level.

"You want to know something? That's always how it is when you're a superhero. People always want pieces of you, even if they don't know why. They think you can save them from everything, even if you can't. And let me tell you, it's easier behind a mask," she said, ducking her head to try to look me in the eyes. I lifted my head to meet her gaze, and she looked at me compassionately.

"No one really knew my mom, Silverhawk; she wasn't a really successful hero, and that's something I kind of keep quiet. I had a lot to prove to the world that I could do everything she couldn't. Steve had the opposite problem with trying to live up to his dad's reputation. When we finally met and started working together, everyone started expecting so much out of us. And you know what? We kept meeting those expectations, and those that we couldn't, we were forgiven, because of everything else we had done. And when things got to me a little too much…" she paused and took off her glasses. "Then Jetstream could go back to being Josie, who only had to worry about her family, her job, and her house, and not anything worse than that."

I straightened up a little in the chair, and Jetstream stood again, holding her glasses casually in one hand.

"You can make your own reputation Warren. And if people want pieces of you, that's just part and parcel of being a superhero. Remember, they're only going to want pieces of… whatever your superhero name is going to be. Superheroes are larger than life; we can afford to let the citizens have those pieces. And who you are under your mask… you only give away whatever pieces you want," she said.

"So… this'll get easier when I grow up?" I asked with uneasy humor.

"It's easier when you have your costume to hide behind. I mean it, it gives you a lot of freedom to either leave your past behind or bring all your baggage with you. And if you're not comfortable with your new power, then people don't ever have to know. I think you're going to do some great things, you and Will and Layla and everyone else. And they won't _let_ people take anything from you you're not willing to give.

"Why do you think Will let you experiment on him? Because he trusts you. Believe me, your friends won't try to push you to give anything you don't want to. You don't have to be afraid of what you can do," she said, smiling a little. I drew back a bit, startled.

It was, oddly enough, something I think was better that I hear from Jetstream rather than the Peacemaker. My mom had only been active for a total of six years; Jetstream had been in the game for over twenty. And Jetstream was a fighter, just like I was going to be. The way Mom did her hero work was almost nothing like how I was going to do mine.

"Thanks," I said quietly, standing up.

"This isn't the first time I've had this conversation," she said with a knowing look. "But I know you'll be worrying about this a lot sooner than my son will. Come here." Before I could even protest, she had given me a hug. "Better get on home and have something to eat before the rest of your friends show up with junk food for your study session."

"Except for Layla," I said, drawing a laugh out of Mrs. Stronghold.

I got out of the house before she could think of anything else she wanted to say to me, my mind already full enough, reaction starting to set in as I walked. It definitely was a lot less than the other injuries I had healed, but still there, a vague feeling of cold, and a little emotional rawness. It was comforting to concentrate on something physical, or at least think about something other than Mrs. Stronghold's uncannily useful advice.

 _I can heal diseases, I really can. Tobias was right_. That drew me up short again and I frowned inside at the thought. Emotionally I didn't _want_ him to be right, but I couldn't intellectually refute what he had said to me. This wasn't any less of a strain on my brain than what Will's mom had said to me, but at least it was a change of pace.

* * *

Prophetically, I had barely gotten back into my own house when my phone rang again. And this time it was Tobias. I debated letting it ring until voice mail picked up, but shoved the thought aside and answered.

"Warren, I have some answers for you," he said simply. "I found the names of the others at the Weaponmaster's party."

"You're fast," I said, digging into a drawer in the kitchen for pencil and paper. "Shoot."

"Torch Seven, Judge Libra, Torpedo Warp, Saber, and Cold Cobalt," he said carefully. "And of them, only Torpedo Warp and the Weaponsmaster ever worked with Royal Pain."

"How do you know about Royal Pain?" I demanded sharply. He had to know something, but I hadn't exactly given him chapter and verse about Cutter's Crew and the academy.

"I inquired. Sky High would like to keep that incident last year quiet, but that simply isn't possible. Particularly when the existence of her academy was just announced to the school board. And when the tapes of your defense of your fellow students just became available to the whole family through the Bureau," he pointed out. "I made an educated guess that you wouldn't want her students to get their hands on that kind of knowledge."

"…Thanks," I said. At least that would keep the rest of us from chasing down false leads. "And you were right," I added on inspiration, not wanting to get into details about those tapes again. I had the perfect distracter. I think I could hear Tobias blinking in confusion on the other end of the line as I abruptly changed the subject. "About me being able to heal diseases."

"What did you try?" he asked, sounding oddly eager.

"My friend Stronghold had a cold. It wasn't really easy to heal, but it wasn't too bad either," I explained.

"Stronghold?" he repeated, sounding confused.

"Will Stronghold, my best friend," I said, wondering how he was going to react.

"You're friends with Will Stronghold…" he said slowly.

"Yes," I said simply. There were another five beats of silence.

"I see. Ah… Very well then. I had something else I wanted to talk to you about, if you have the time," he said calmly. If I had been expecting a big blow-up, I was doomed to disappointment.

"Sure, I have the time," I said politely. He might have told me that he had disowned Baron Battle, but he couldn't have been entirely comfortable with me being best friends with the son of the man that captured him. I could spare him the time for not going off the deep end.

"I wanted to tell you about something I had in mind for a graduation present for you. I wondered if you would like to come over in June to the family holdings and meet the rest of your relatives. You have a couple of young cousins that are rather taken with you, and one of them might even be up for some teaching from someone relatively closer to his own age…"

"Wait, I thought all my cousins were women?" I asked inanely, a little startled by the offer. Well, ok, a lot startled. Hadn't he recalled our first meeting hadn't gone so swimmingly? That he had threatened me, injured my mom, and I had brought him to his knees just to make a point?

"They are. These are your cousins' children, your first cousins once removed. One of them is a little boy about eight years old; Reginald's oldest child Ivana his is mother. He's starting to show signs of possibly being a pyrokinetic. It would be nice perhaps if you were willing to teach him a little, as well as his grandfather and I. If you wouldn't mind, of course. Thomas respects both of us, but he thinks _you_ are rather interesting. It may be that nothing comes to pass, heaven knows we've been wrong in the past, but I thought perhaps it might be beneficial for both of you," he explained. I stared at some middle distance, obscurely flattered by both his gift and his request, but also confused as hell.

How could he want me to teach _anyone_ in his family? How could he trust me? My powers worked differently than his, he saw that I got angry pretty easily, and I tended to hold a grudge. What if I got frustrated and accidentally hurt the kid? What if I taught him something that Tobias didn't approve of? What if I told the kid what Tobias had done at our first meeting? _That_ surely would change the kid's opinion of his great-grandfather in a hurry.

"I… I'm going to be starting work almost right away," I told him, trying to stall while I attempted to come up with a way to broach the sheer insanity of this visit for both of us.

"I'm not talking about a three-month vacation. Just a short visit, maybe a week or so. You seem to be as much a workaholic as the rest of us, and I wouldn't try to take you away from your work. It's the most important thing you'll ever do in your life," he said with dignity. _He understands_ , I thought. I _needed_ to get out there, to prove myself, to help people, and it was becoming more and more of a need as time went on.

But even if he understood that kind of thing, it didn't negate the fact that the idea was still crazy in the first place.

"I know it is… Tobias, why the hell do you want me over there?" I asked finally, not being able to find a tactful way of pointing out my concerns. "You threatened me _and_ my mom, I threatened you and wanted to turn you in to the Bureau. I don't know anything about how your family teaches using your powers, and mine aren't even that much like yours!"

"Not as different as you may think," he started, but I continued on.

"And I still haven't forgiven you for burning my mom," I added. Silence reigned on the phone for another thirty seconds.

"I told you when we first met that I take bonds of blood very seriously. I wasn't able to be any part of your life for far too long. Forgive an old man for wanting to reconnect with his only grandson before he shuffled off the mortal coil," Tobias said.

"Bull. You're indestructible, same as me, and I know what that means," I snapped.

"Tell me," he said primly.

"We don't ever get sick, we don't stay hurt, and we live a very long time. And we never get to take the easy way out. I did my family tree in class, Tobias, and I read the birth and death dates for every Battle that died of old age. So don't try to guilt-trip me. My mom's much better at it."

One of the effects of being indestructible was perfect health. We recovered instantly from almost any injury, though that wouldn't save us from something like, say, decapitation or explosion. But barring that, any indestructible Battle that hadn't met with an accidental death had a lifespan of nearly a century and a half. I had often wondered why the judge who had sentenced my dad had written out his prison term the way he had, and now I knew. Probably anyone who had been directly responsible for putting my dad in prison or keeping him there would be dead before my dad croaked.

I knew Tobias himself was nearly ninety, despite the fact that he looked barely sixty. When I had first learned that, it scared the crap out of me. I had known, intellectually, that I would outlive my mom, and all my friends' parents, and probably one or more of my friends themselves just on general principle. But when I learned that I would not only probably outlive them, but that I would outlive them all by at least a generation or two, it frightened me.

For a while after learning that, I had felt utterly alien, completely inhuman. Then I had listened to the others' family trees and power side effects. Zack, and most of his family, could function on four hours of sleep a night if they wanted to with no problems whatsoever. Will could easily survive the oxygen deprivation at high altitudes for hours, even days, under conditions that could probably kill me within minutes, and give a regular person a screaming case of altitude sickness. If Layla were dropped in the middle of a barren, rocky waste, she would probably go quietly bonkers within hours just because her own mental balance was tied into the plant biosphere. After hearing all of that, suddenly I seemed much more normal.

"Ah… I see," Tobias said, taken aback.

"Just… don't try to play me, or manipulate me, or set something up. I'm sick and tired of it," I told him. "Can you be straight with me for five minutes? Why invite me to your house and ask for my help?"

"Because I want to. Very simply, I want you to see that there's something _good_ in your father's family, something not me and not him. If you're willing to teach Thomas even a little, then that will mean that something of who _you_ are will continue on in my family even if you never come back again. I consider that the truest form of immortality," he explained.

"You…" I started, and then trailed off. It was a good reason, a real reason, and I believed him when he said it, but I couldn't bring myself to answer him yet.

"I value your opinion, Warren. We're traditionalists, I'll admit that readily, but we're not averse to learning new things. You've probably learned things about your abilities that we've never considered, just because you didn't know it couldn't be done. And we probably know some things you don't, because we have hundreds of years of experience behind us."

"That still doesn't quite explain the whole 'you tried to turn me into the Bureau, so please, come over to my house and corrupt the youth,' situation," I protested.

"It's the privilege of age that I get to ignore some things as inconsequential, and take others in stride. And I'm considered eccentric rather than batty when I do so. You had a very salient point when you… protested the manner of my warning to you. Therefore, I'm not worried about it. I know you wouldn't want to frighten Thomas. Should you choose to enlighten my offspring about the details of my first visit, I cannot stop you. But I think you will find all my sons and daughters understand expediency," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I'll visit," I found myself telling him, while quietly questioning my own sanity. Maybe it was just my own morbid curiosity more than anything that made me accept.

"Thank you Warren. I'll send you details closer to graduation. And I'll look up Torpedo Warp and the Weaponsmaster and see what they're up to these days," he promised.

"Thanks," I told him shortly, and snapped the phone shut. I looked up to see my mom standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

"He finally asked you," she said evenly. "He talked to me last week; he wanted my permission to basically kidnap you for a week. I told him he had to convince you on his own."

"When that guy wants to reconnect, he doesn't screw around," I said, shaking my head. It didn't even bother me that she had been eavesdropping; I never could have kept this from her anyway. "I can't believe he'd want me anywhere near his family, not with the way I treated him."

"Like he said, he can be an eccentric old man if he wants to. I know Tobias is desperate to have you in his life, Warren. He might have sounded matter-of-fact when he talked about disowning Baron, but I could tell it nearly killed him to do that," she said softly, padding from the doorway to give me a hug. "He's a lot like you in some ways, he likes to hide his pain."

I hugged her back hard and shook my head a little.

"I'll worry about it in June. Seriously, if I think about this too hard my head is going to explode," I said finally.

"You've been using your new power again too," she added.

"How can you tell? I was all the way over at Stronghold's house," I asked.

"You know I can always tell what you're feeling, and usually a lot farther away than I can with anyone else. But with your new power… I can pick that up from a mile away. Also Josie called me," she added, and I snorted. Power-sensing or gossip, which was faster? I finally relented and told her what happened, ending with Mrs. Stronghold's curious speech. Mom only gave me another enigmatic smile when I mentioned it, which probably meant she had been talking to Will's mom about it a while ago. Mom might be setting me up for things, but when it was her that did it, I didn't mind.

* * *

The gang had been a little surprised at Will's sudden recovery that night, and Ethan had, of course, wanted all the details out of me. He thought it was the height of cool that I was able to do that, and then wanted to know how I had thought of it. Then I finally had to spill a little more of my first conversation with my grandfather, though I still left out his more extreme methods for getting my attention. And I left the most recent conversation out entirely. No way I was going to spill that until I had some kind of handle on it myself.

"Huh, I wonder if you had side effects because Justin made Will sick instead of him just catching a cold," Ethan said thoughtfully. "I mean, the way I understand it, Justin made Will's body _think_ it was sick, instead of actually having a cold virus _making_ him sick."

I shrugged expansively.

"Your guess is as good as mine at this point. I don't have anything to compare it to."

"So you want to practice on someone else when we get sick?" Magenta had asked me. Will and I had shaken our heads simultaneously.

"I spiked Stronghold's temperature trying to fix him, I think I was pretty close to burning him when he threw me off," I explained.

"Yeah, didn't feel so great there at the end," Will put in.

"You couldn't break your own trance?" Ethan asked me.

"I wasn't quite done yet. I couldn't _hear_ him," I corrected. Will just shrugged philosophically.

"No big deal, nothing bad happened really… Until my mom came in," he pointed out. I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah, thanks for the back-up there _pal,_ way to let your mom chew me out for experimenting on you," I said sarcastically, though I was still smiling.

"Hmm… I just had a thought…" Ethan said, looking pensive. "I wonder if you could use that as a weapon. Temperature-spiking I mean."

It was all I could do to _not_ explode in anger at that point, but my expression must have shown plenty, because Ethan flinched back, paling. This was the one thing that I had that wasn't tainted by my dad's reputation. Baron Battle and his crimes shadowed all my relatives, my powers, my reputation, even my appearance. The healing power was the one thing I had that wasn't connected to him in any way; it was the one pure and good thing that was solely and totally mine. The bare idea of using it purposefully to hurt someone made my stomach churn.

I clenched my hands and closed my eyes, holding the mental image of a bonfire, slowly contracting the flames until they were the size of a campfire, carefully reining in my anger. I didn't dare say anything until I had control again, because underneath it was as much fear as anger. Fear _at_ my anger, truth be told. I needed another emotional confrontation today like I needed a hole in the head.

Healing was as emotionally draining as it was physically draining, and it seemed to wear at my self-control; _that_ was becoming abundantly clear. I hadn't been very reasonable with Tobias, and I sure as hell wasn't being reasonable with Ethan now. I shouldn't have to resort to meditation rituals to keep my temper when Ethan was just trying to be a good tactician for the team.

"Sorry, that was dumb, I shouldn't have said that," Ethan babbled. I took two deep breaths and opened my eyes again, slowly unclenching my fists. At least I hadn't powered up; I had _that_ much self-control at least.

"Not your fault, I've had a strange day," I said in an impressively calm tone of voice. I think that freaked my friends out more than my near-blowup. "I just don't want to use my healing power to hurt someone. Ever. Ok?"

"Ok, sure thing," Ethan said quickly.

"Are you sure you're all right Warren?" Layla asked, concerned

"Yeah… I'll be ok," I said finally. "Look, don't some of you have studying to do? I have physics homework that isn't going to do itself."

The rest of the gang shook themselves and started to break out their books and papers, while Ethan gingerly sat down next to me. He had started to take some senior-level courses so he could begin to take college-credit classes next year, and he and I sometimes ran into each other in our more normal classes.

"I'm really sorry," he whispered as he sharpened a pencil. "Really, I wasn't thinking."

"Don't you usually think too much Popsicle?" I asked, and he relaxed a little. If I had still been angry, I would have called him by his name, and he knew it.

"Not about things like that. I just… Didn't realize how that sounded until it came out of my mouth," he explained.

"Apology accepted. Now, what did you get for number eight?"

Ethan bent to his books, and I tried to focus on the more mundane task of determining the velocity of a unlaiden swallow. Right now a little mundanity was extremely appealing, because it was getting pretty clear our future was going to be extremely weird.


	22. Consequences of Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a humorous out-take from this chapter - [Warren versus the birthday](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532878). And another - [Warren versus Trixie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532879), that goes right after this chapter.

Predictably, Justin practically pounced on Will when we got off the bus on Monday morning.

"Hey Will, did it work?" he demanded cheerfully.

"What?" Will asked, startled.

"Did you get sick at all? I'm timing myself," he explained.

"Oh… yeah. I got sick," Will said, shaking his head a little.

"When? How bad?" Justin demanded.

"Uh… I think it started Friday after school… I guess around four. And I was all stuffed up and sneezing and coughing and stuff," he said after a second's thought.

"Woot! Five hours, that's a new record!" he exclaimed, punching one hand into the other. Will looked at him oddly. "Sorry, it just used to be five _days_ before anything would happen. I'm trying to get it down to, ya know, _minutes_ or something that might actually be useful in a fight. But you're not looking too sick now."

"My mom's garlic and herb soup," Layla jumped in quickly, "Cleared it right up." I shot her a grateful glance over Justin's head.

"Well hey, still! If it works during battle, that'll do, that'll do. Oh, Elise wants a re-match this Friday, same time. You guys are going down!" he said cheerfully, and turned to walk away.

"That guy is _way_ too happy," Zack said with utter seriousness.

* * *

From there, things got interesting indeed. It turned out there was a definite pattern to our wins in the Gauntlet. Our first run against most groups usually ended up with us winning by a pretty big margin. Our second runs were a lot harder. Then we started losing. These groups weren't composed of freshmen, they were experienced seniors, and the rather humbling experience of being thrashed by sophomores, no matter who they were, was more than enough motivation to get them in top form in record time.

When the senior groups had complained initially at their losses the first couple of times, Ethan ended up standing up and giving them a lecture, one he ended up repeating to nearly every other team we had faced and won.

"The reason we keep beating you is you all have the same weaknesses. There are usually only one or two things we have to remember in order to defeat you more easily. You have to remember six different kinds of weaknesses when you fight us, and that makes us a lot harder to beat than you."

Some groups found that enlightening, others found it annoying, but none of them argued with us about it. Especially because it helped to have a solid reason why a group of sophomores still had the highest Gauntlet scores in the school, at least for the first week after the assembly. After that, things started to get more even all the way around.

Boomer had been learning a lot from those fights as well, and shortly after the assembly, had begun to reconfigure the Gauntlet. The original configuration was excellent if there were only a few defenders, as they could use the confined space to their advantage. But with two groups of at least four people each facing off, the confined inner maze of the fortress became a trap. It didn't let people run or use any of their mobility, and actually created a very uneven playing field.

Now there were several different ways it could be set up, the most popular was which was the "city block" set-up. It gave everyone the options of mobility or concealment, playing to everyone's strengths in turn. The original fortress/maze Boomer still used for rescue scenarios, and then he had made others, like a forest-like setting for a "capture the flag" type of game, or a crowded warehouse for a more realistic "find the escaping villain" run.

Our first bad loss was to Psychic Club, as Elise was extremely motivated to find a way to beat us. I still didn't know why she was so angry with us (her explanation she had fed to Layla and I didn't really seem to fly that far); but she had gone from white-hot rage to cold, clinical anger in our last two sessions. For someone who could read minds, Elise seemed to have twice as much attitude as I did, and I held world records in that field. I had started to wonder if her apparent anger was just a ruse, something to keep us from figuring out her real motivations. For all I knew, she was just testing us, trying to see if we would believe she could be so easily swayed.

The second time we had gone up against her group, we had been the defenders, and it had been a very near loss on our part. Tracy had gotten to Zack again and nearly caused him to drop the light bombs on us. Elise had tried to move against Magenta instead of me, but apparently had found her too hard of a nut to crack, which had the effect of distracting her long enough for Ethan to stun Chris, leaving them without any eyes when Zack was able to do his blinding thing. That left Layla and I free to deal with Justin, Zoë, and Robin, but it hadn't been easy.

But our third session was a different kettle of fish altogether. This time we were in the city block set-up, and this time Elise and her group had had plenty of time to prepare and train. It had been almost three weeks since the first time we had met, and from what Ethan could tell, Psychic Club had been doing a ridiculous amount of planning and practice.

We were defending again, this time holding the "city plaza" against Elise's group. The thing we had found out about Psychic Club was that they never did the same thing twice. That should have tipped us off, because as good as our tactics were, they were still the same basic tactics we had hammered out in September. Predictability is bad when you keep facing the same people over and over; that was the lesson we learned that day.

I don't know how long we waited after Boomer rang the starting bell, but it was several long, tense minutes at least. Will was fairly high up in hopes of being able to spot them from a distance, and also to rescue any of us that got in over our heads. Zack, Ethan, and Magenta, our "Charlie's Angels," were standing on the steps of "city hall" above us. They were in cover behind the pillars, and had their stun-rays out and ready, with Zack holding the light bomb in his other hand. All were ready to scatter at a moment's notice. Layla and I stood in front, her with several vines ready to act as whips or shields as needed, and me in a near power-up to begin burning when ready.

Zoë actually levitated Robin and Justin in, holding a shield of pure thought in front of her, blocking both Layla's vines and my subsequent fireballs. Chris, Tracy, and Elise were nowhere to be seen, not that we had much time to look. Zoë was fast, nearly as fast as Will, and Layla and I didn't have much time to attack before they were nearly on top of us.

Then everything went merrily to hell. White light suddenly blinded me; there was some yelling from behind me, and someone sneezing, and then everything went black. The next thing I remember was opening my eyes to see Will crouched on the ground, straining upward as if against some great weight. Zoë was off to one side, her hand stretched out towards him, bleeding from the nose.

Before I could even begin to pull myself together, I heard Magenta yell out a surrender, and Boomer rang the completion bell. Then I spent the next five minutes wishing I could just shoot myself as the stun-headache wore off. Between the rest of the gang's explanations, I slowly put the picture together. First off, Tracy had taken over Zack again, this time actually subverting him enough to get him to drop the light-bomb prematurely.

Since _they_ had been in control of it instead of us, none of the rest of them had been blinded. That had given Justin enough leeway to get up the stairs and tag Ethan and Magenta. Apparently whatever he had learned from psysicking Will three weeks ago had given him the clue he needed to get his power into a combat time-frame. Both of them had been stricken almost immediately with coughing and sneezing. Magenta had apparently sneezed and fired her stun-ray at the same time, stunning me by accident.

Then Robin had telekinetically lifted their weapons, giving her and Justin an edge when Ethan and Magenta got their vision back. Layla hadn't been able to do anything in the interim because Elise had been holding her paralyzed and was quickly ransacking through her uppermost thoughts for information about Will. Whatever she had gotten from her she had passed on to Zoë, which was enough to keep Will from coming to our rescue. That's what had been happening there at the end, Zoë had actually forced Will down from the sky and was trying to keep him grounded and away from us so we couldn't escape. But apparently she could only barely hold down as much weight as Will could lift, hence the nosebleed from her massive amount of concentration.

Elise, Chris, and Tracy finally came down from wherever they were hiding so we could all walk off the Gauntlet course together. It was supposed to help build a sense of team and foster friendship. But usually it was just a lengthy bitch and moan session. Today was no different, because Zack was seriously pissed off. Not that we all weren't, this was our first bad loss, but normally cool-as-a-cucumber Zack was having a tantrum.

"Damnit! That's like the third time! Why can't I keep you guys out of my head?" he demanded. He was mostly talking to himself, but Tracy answered him anyway.

"Your walls aren't that great Zack. And you're our greatest threat," she explained.

"Like how?" he asked, rolling his eyes.

"Most of us work on line of sight, barring Chris and I," Tracy explained. "And if Chris has to see for everyone, we're slow. That's how you got us the first time. I'm obviously pretty vulnerable when I'm using my powers, and so is Elise. So better to put us both somewhere safe, and have Chris with us so he can see for her. Then when I take _you_ out, with your light bombs, the rest of us can work much easier. Besides, using your own tactics against you is choice."

"I've been working on those stupid walls since October!" Zack said, still sounding sullen.

"It might be the image you're using. You're using something like a forcefield, right?" she asked, and Zack nodded slowly.

"Ok, well, when I'm in my astral form, I see myself as being made of light. So when I try to get through your walls, I just merge with them. It's a lot easier to do that then try to get through fire, or plants, or steel." She nodded and myself, Layla, and Will in turn. "Try a different mental image, it might work better."

Zack looked a little rebellious, but nodded anyway.

No one else really had anything to say until we were out of the locker rooms, and in the cafeteria, but the minute we were all together again, Magenta nearly exploded.

"That does it," she said firmly.

"That does… what?" Zack asked.

"I am sick and tired of getting my weapon taken and used against me. I swear, this is how all Sidekicks get captured, and I don't want this to turn into a 'rescue the guinea pig girl' or 'glow boy' or 'puddle' thing," she said, thumping her tray on the table. Ethan was nodding vigorously behind her, too polite to rant himself, but more than willing to back Magenta up.

"So… what do want? A weapon that can't be taken? You aren't going to cyborg yourself, are you?" Zack asked.

"No, no, no," Magenta said, shaking her head. "Hey Will, doesn't your mom have like three black belts?"

"Actually six, I think," Will said after a second of thought.

"Eight," Ethan corrected automatically.

"Ok, does she still keep in contact with any of her teachers?" she persisted.

"Yeah, she goes to a dojo every day to work out," Will said, nodding.

"You think she'd put in a good word with them if I wanted to take lessons?" she inquired.

"Whoa, you want more training on top of what we're doing already?' Will asked incredulously.

"Not all of us can throw people through walls, Will," Magenta pointed out. Will blushed.

"Uh, right. I'll ask her tonight."

* * *

It turned out that yes, Mrs. Stronghold did keep in contact with several of her teachers, most of whom made their livings teaching super-people unarmed combat. So they wouldn't be alarmed if say, Magenta shifted in the middle of a demonstration. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Stronghold said they were used to incorporating superpowers into their teachings.

Magenta was enrolled before she could blink, and tried to get Zack to join. That didn't go so well, as Zack really didn't have the right kind of mindset. Magenta's sensei threw him out the first day. I took pity on him (and her) and said I'd teach him a little of what I knew. I hadn't had much in the way of formal training, but I had picked up enough from my few lessons, some action films, and practical experience to give me a fairly effective form of no-holds-barred self-defense.

It was a lot easier for Zack to get his head around, and he didn't have to worry about looking stupid in front of Magenta while learning it. And it turned out Zack was a hell of lot better picking up fighting moves than classroom facts, at least when they were delivered with a healthy dose of reality in why they worked.

"Sorry man, that was why I got thrown out," he had told me while explaining what had happened his first and last day at the dojo. "It's just, ya know, Magenta can get all focused and Zen and stuff and really… um can't. I can do this stuff better, I know it. I just wanna do it my way." That was something I could sympathize with.

I'd asked everyone else if they wanted to join us, but got a bunch of negatives. Layla had declined the grounds that her mother would lock her in her room for the rest of her natural life if she was caught learning hand-to-hand combat. Ethan said he had a cousin that was going to teach him judo. And Will said he was already learning stuff from his dad.

* * *

The loss had rankled with our team, and we threw ourselves into our training. Winning, I had found, was practically its own reward, and I certainly wasn't immune to wanting more. I wanted to beat the other seniors as much as the rest of the team, both for the simple fact of defeating them, and for the fact that we were _good_ , and wanted to stay that way.

Over the next several months we kept trading wins with several of the other teams, mostly Psychic Club and Amorphous Club (whom we still hadn't figured out how to fight effectively), along with a few others. Strength Club usually could pull out a spectacular win, and Electric Club had a very interesting series of wins when they proved to Zack, conclusively, that he was _not_ immune to electricity like his dad.

Real-Shifter and Deceiver Club had originally told us they wanted to go up against us once they had watched us for a while. We had all worried about that, not wanting to get another Psychic Club on our hands. In a capture-the-flag scenario, Real-Shifter and Deceiver Club, working together, had to conceal a disk containing "vital information" from us, and we had to get it from them. Since Magenta, when shifted, could tell and tell immediately by scent when something was real and when something wasn't, we ended up waltzing through the first few of those. But only the first few. Then they became nearly as impossible to beat as Amorphous Club. Having the ground, or rocks, or other things start to come to life to attack you was profoundly disturbing, and I don't think I was the only one who ended up with a nightmare or two after those sessions.

During that time, I finally had my eighteenth birthday (less said about _that_ fiasco, the better), and was able to apply for my hero's license. I also worked my last shift at the Paper Lantern, taking my leave of Mr. and Mrs. Lee for the first time in many years. The gang came by to help me celebrate my going-away party, though they mostly just ended up making a big mess for me to clean up. I didn't mind though, it was the thought that counted.

I had to quit my job finally because I was now taking night classes to learn things for my cover job. The Bureau wasn't above getting someone a fake college degree or certificate in order to keep them "legitimately" employed at their cover job, provided the hero in question knew the correct skills. But since I couldn't exactly fake my way through life-saving procedures, I had to do it the hard way. Somehow that figured; I never seemed to take the easy road.

Our regular classes continued unabated. We went from Superhero Psychology to Current Supervillain Agendas, Superpowers Throughout the Ages to Last Resorts: A Superhero's Dilemma. That was, of course, on top of our regular high school classes in history, social studies, math, regular science, physics, and English. I'm sure I wasn't the only person in the school to start wondering what it would be like to be normal…

* * *

When the senior groups started to clobber us in wins in the Gauntlet, Boomer changed the rules again. All this time, Boomer had forbidden Will to take any kind of direct action against our opponents, or even to touch them. After the New Year though, Boomer told us the gloves were coming off. He put Will back in the game with no holds barred. That's when things got _interesting._

Up until now, Will had been acting as either transport or a wall-destroyer for the team. Now he was bringing all his speed and strength into play, which abruptly switched the field back in our favor. I hadn't actually seen Will in a no-holds-barred fight, at least not this way. Our cafeteria fight hadn't even lasted enough for him to get warmed up. I had only seen the aftermath of his fight with Royal Pain, and all of our Gauntlet sessions thus far hadn't had Will on the offensive. Now he was, and he was seriously scaring us, in a good way.

He could round up most of Flight Club in a few passes, and provided he got the drop, he could out-wrestle anyone in the school, and send them flying through multiple walls. He was always really careful to pick the most indestructible people he could for those stunts, but still managed to pull out a few wins by basically "bowling" one team member into the rest. A couple times the rest of us could just sit back and watch him work, at least until people started adjusting their tactics to deal with him properly.

There were dozens of sensors in the Gauntlet room to monitor our powers under stress. For example, exactly how hot I got, or what wattage Zack was putting out, or how much weight of plants Layla was moving. When Ethan pulled some of Will's stats out of curiosity, we'd gotten a surprise. Will was hitting harder than his father and flying faster than his mother. His powers seemed to feed off each other synergistically.

Now our Gauntlet sessions were more like how Boomer had predicted back in September, with Will in battle with one or two of the most powerful people on the team, while we battled the remainder. There weren't that many people that could give Will competition physically, and he was slowly starting to be able to hold on his own against those with mental powers.

All of this might have caused Will to get a swelled head, except the rest of us had taken it upon ourselves as our sacred duty to see that he didn't. It helped that Will still wasn't exactly a genius when it came to science or math, and had to ask for our help. And Magenta was still the queen of the well-timed zinger. Layla also had him trained enough that when she shot him a _look_ , he knew it was time to shut up. Zack and him would sometimes complain together about the girls in their life, when they weren't around, but Ethan and I had no sympathy for them. Mostly because Magenta and Layla were usually right.

* * *

It was right after one of our sessions sometime in March, though, that I found out that we didn't even really need to keep Will's ego down. He was doing a pretty good job of that himself. It had been our most recent one against Strength Club, president Tony Sinclair's group; two guys with super strength of varying levels, a set of indestructible twins that had the ability to hit with powerful force blasts when they worked together, a guy whose power was to change into an armadillo, and a girl who could turn her flesh into stone. She couldn't actually _move_ once she shifted, but like all of Strength Club, she was a devoted body-builder. They were perhaps one of the more flexible of the Power Clubs in who they allowed.

I was trying to relax off to one side; letting the rest of the guys clear out before I went to the locker rooms. I had been getting a little better at gauging how my powers affected my emotions. I was now noticing more clearly that the more I used them, the worse my temper was afterward, and so I never left the Gauntlet before I had a chance to clear my head a little. It was no wonder I had been such a hair-trigger psycho for so long, but at least I had figured out why and was dealing with it. Will knew that, everyone knew that, and so they politely ignored me as they did their little Boomer-mandated sportsmanlike handshakes at the end of every session.

We won a lot more of our sessions now, but it was much more brutal on each side. Sure, Will could thrash anyone at Sky High one-on-one, but as Boomer had told him, he was only one person. We couldn't count on Will as our transport anymore, and our mobility was seriously hampered. Things were harder, but still possible.

Sometimes Will would win against his opponent, only to find the rest of us hadn't managed to do what we needed to do. I knew it bothered him a lot that he couldn't protect us. Well, it bothered me too, more than I could say. I was supposed to be the second-in-command, to take care of the team when he was off battling their champions. And I couldn't always do that the way I wanted to. I knew things would get better as we went, but I still rode myself as hard as I could. Everyone else still had two years of training to go, but I would be in the thick of things in a few months.

When Will got to Tony, the two clasped hands in a bone-crushing grip. Tony was probably the strongest kid in school until Will had powered up, but luckily he didn't seem to hold a grudge, not even when he was repeatedly beaten by a sophomore.

Tony winced when Will shook his hand, and I saw Will drop the handshake like he had been burned.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to-," he babbled. Tony just smiled and shook his hand, opening and closing his hand a few times to test if it still worked.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it. So, this Wednesday at five still good for you?" he asked.

"Yeah… Look, are you still sure that… um, it's still ok?" Will asked enigmatically.

"Totally. If you're still not comfortable, then bring your dad along. Unless he's out on a call or something," Tony said with a smile, and then headed off to the locker room with everyone else. Will stood awkwardly for a second, chewing on his lip slightly, and then looked up at me.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked. I nodded and jerked my head over in my direction.

"So what were you talking to Tony about?" I asked as he sat down on the ground.

"Work-out session. Boxing practice and stuff," he explained.

"Why don't you ever want to work out with Zack and me?" I asked. "I mean, he's getting better, but he still seriously lacks coordination in some area. I have no idea how he's so good at hurdles if he can't hit the same spot on a punching bag with his fist five times out of ten. It's freaking funny."

"Um… I wouldn't want to laugh at him," Will said, though I could tell he was snickering inside.

"He laughs at himself a lot more than I do," I explained, and pulled the tie out of my hair, shaking my head to loosen it up. "So why not?" Will shot a look sideways at me.

"Because I'm afraid I'd hurt you," he said finally.

"I'm indestructible," I reminded him for about the fiftieth time, sighing in exasperation. It was the excuse he'd given me the last four times I'd asked him and it was wearing a little thin.

"Yeah, doesn't mean it wouldn't be painful. And what if I hit Zack by accident? I could… kill him," he said softly. I turned sideways to look at Will straight on. He was never this introspective; it wasn't like him at all. I had always known, from the minute I powered up, that my powers were lethally destructive, because of why my dad was in jail. Will had never really talked about any similar worries he had about his abilities. Maybe it was because _his_ dad had never killed anyone with his powers.

"What's going on Stronghold?" I asked.

"I'm getting stronger," he said simply, as if that should explain everything. Though the way he said it, with a gloomy expression on his face like his pet had just died, gave me a hint.

"We already knew that. We knew that weeks ago when Ethan pulled the Gauntlet readings," I pointed out, waiting for him to make his point. It didn't totally surprise me that Will might be getting more powerful. Technically he wasn't done growing yet, none of us were, and superpowers tended to grow with you. Even I, at the lofty and advanced age of eighteen, was still finding out my limits.

"I got the most recent ones the other day. I'm stronger," he said again. "And faster. Too strong."

"Too strong? How strong is too strong?" I asked, looking at him sideways.

"You know, my first day of school, I was still faking that I had super strength. I was up really early, trying to move some weights, just to see if, you know, anything would happen. And then my dad was going to come up to make sure I was awake, so I go and load all the weights on the bars, about five hundred pounds, and pretend that I had just finished with a set," he said, and sighed.

"I've been mostly working out at school and stuff, and so I hadn't even used my stuff at home for a while. Then the other day I went and loaded up the bar again, just like I did that first day. And it was nothing to me, nothing at all. I lifted it with one hand. I lifted it with _one finger_ ," he said, sounding a little hysterical.

"Stronghold…" I started, but he ran right over me.

"And then I went into the Secret Sanctum and loaded up the stuff my dad does when he's doing a serious workout and I went through a whole long session. I wasn't even tired. I wasn't even _sweating_. I'm half-scared to even hold Layla now, because what if the phone rings or something and startles me and I accidentally crush her? I mean, I nearly crushed Tony's hand just now, and he's the second-strongest guy in school.

"Boomer told me to go no-holds-barred against these guys, but I can't because I'm afraid I'm seriously going to hurt someone. And if all those readings are right, I'm stronger than my dad. I'm stronger than _the Commander_. I mean, if I can't work out against Tony because I might hurt him, I should be able to work out against my dad right? But what if I hurt _him?_ People need him!"

"Stronghold-," I said again, but Will wasn't even listening.

"I'm still in high school, I can't take his place if something happens. I barely know what I'm doing half the time! I can't _be_ him, I can't do what he does, I-."

"Will!" I said sharply, and Stronghold stopped short, startled by my use of his name. "Seriously, what brought this on? What's going on?"

"I…" Will dropped his head into his hands for a long minute and took a few deep breaths, then lifted his head again, shoving his hair back, looking a lot more composed. "Sorry, didn't mean to freak out there. I… had a really bad dream the other day." I waited a few seconds, and Will took another deep breath.

"I accidentally killed my parents, and then had to take over doing what they did, except I kept hurting more people on accident, and eventually I went villain because it was easier being evil and having everyone hating me than being good and having people hate me," he said in a rush.

 _Jesus,_ I thought quietly. For some reason it had never crossed my mind that Will might have doubts about his ability to be a hero. He was a Stronghold, through and through, a third generation hero. Why should he ever doubt what he was going to be?

"Did you ever have dreams like that?" he asked. I nodded, but didn't elaborate, and he didn't press.

"I just… You know what it's like to be afraid of your powers," he said simply. I nodded slowly.

"I told you my mom used to keep a fire extinguisher around when I was younger. For a long time after I first powered up I was afraid I'd burn her accidentally, so I didn't even hug her for almost a year," I told him quietly, and he nodded, looking relieved.

"See, you get where I'm coming from," he said, sighing.

"Why don't you tell your dad? I mean, shouldn't he know more about this than me?" I asked him.

"What am I going to tell him? That I'm stronger than him? I mean, _he's_ always been the strongest. How is it going to look when I… Wouldn't he be mad?" Will asked.

"I think I remember you telling me how _not_ telling your dad about your powers went. And I know you told me how he reacted when you really did get your powers. Stronghold, he's proud of you," I said. "Seriously, you're making up some tragedy that isn't going to happen."

"Are you sure?" Will asked. I smacked him in the back of the head. "Hey!"

"You're being an idiot. That was a dope-slap back to reality," I told him, standing up and glaring at him hotly. "Seriously, just because you figured out that you have issues with your powers doesn't change anything. Your dad's been living with the same problems since he powered up, and he'll know what to do a hell of a lot better than I do."

"But-," Will protested, getting to his feet. "I just…"

"You were the one that wanted to talk to me right now. You want to have heartfelt conversations after Gauntlet runs? Then you're not going to get happy skippy Warren," I snapped. Will snorted and tried to choke it back.

"'Happy skippy Warren?'" he repeated. I struggled to keep a straight face as I realized what I had just said. "If you're ever happy and skippy, I'll _know_ Elise has taken over your mind."

"Yeah, you remember that. So, are you going to stop stalling and ask your dad about that stuff?" I asked. Will got over the last of his laughter in a hurry and finally nodded firmly. "Good. Seriously Stronghold, you're going to be fine. If you're holding back, it's because you know you have to. And if you haven't screwed up yet, back before you even knew how strong you were, you're not going to start now."

" _Peace, Stronghold, stop yakking and get off of my Gauntlet!"_ Boomer called from up in the tower.

I rolled my eyes and headed towards the locker room, a much relieved Will trailing after me.

* * *

On top of all the physical work we had been doing, we had also been trying to dig up information on Royal Pain's academy. We had worked over the names my grandfather had given us at least a dozen times, but even with Bureau records we couldn't backtrack them to anything connecting them with the academy. It wasn't like supervillains were monitored all the time, or otherwise there'd never be such a thing as a surprise attack. Tobias couldn't find any links with their finances (and how he got into those, he didn't offer and I didn't ask) to the companies Royal Pain had been using to fund her academy. Oddly enough though, it was Zack who made the connection.

This time we were studying at Ethan's house right after school, and Ethan was frantically putting away some files he had scattered around the room so we could sit. Zack picked up one of them to hand to Ethan, reading it casually.

"John Tennyson?" he asked.

"The Weaponsmaster, he was one of our suspects… but we still can't find anything connecting him. It's frustrating," Ethan said, sighing.

"Tennyson. Huh, like Tenney," Zack commented. Ethan dropped the file. "What, dude?"

"Like Tenney. No, _exactly_ like Tenney!" he exclaimed. "Zack, you're a genius!"

"Dude, I know I am!" Zack said, beaming. "Why?"

"Tenney is a variation on Tennyson, and you know powers run in families! He must have changed his name. The Weaponsmaster is related to Royal Pain! Guys, this could be our first real lead to finding the academy!"


	23. Growing Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Trixie the cat, a character from the "Warren vs..." stories also in this series, makes an apperance. So if you haven't read about her yet, now might be a good time! ;)
> 
> There's also a humorous one-shot - [Warren versus the road trip](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532886) that goes right after this chapter.

"So, to avoid getting yelled at by Boomer, are we actually going to make an appointment with the principal this time?" Layla was saying to Will.

"I think we better," Ethan said, adjusting his glasses. "We don't want to look like panicky kids."

"But I don't get why they didn't think of this like… _months_ ago or somethin'," Zack said.

I probably should have been contributing to the conversation, considering how important this was for us in general and me personally, but I couldn't even look in Zack's direction without cracking up. I had started taking my cat Trixie with me to our study sessions, mostly because I was gone so much of the time otherwise (apparently my cat had abandonment issues, the less said about _that_ , the better). Today she had chosen to sit with Zack, and right now it looked as if she had been hooked up to a Van der Graff generator. Every hair was standing on end, and she looked like nothing so much as a brown and black puffball.

"Maybe it was so obvious they just dismissed it. You know, like hiding in plain sight," Magenta offered.

"That makes sense…" Will said, nodding. "They might have been overthinking it."

There was a pause, and Magenta smacked me on the arm.

"You totally missed a good one there," she accused. "Will… overthinking…"

"Sorry," I said, and nodded over at Zack and Trixie.

"Aw…" Layla said, smiling, and reached out to pet her, getting a shock for her trouble.

"So, do we have any brilliant ideas on how to track down the Weaponsmaster? We have to _do_ something about this, other than just telling Powers," I asked.

"I was hoping you did," Will said a little sheepishly.

"Look, all we know about the guy is that he has a home in Bern, some technopathic power, a list of supposed crimes as long as my arm, and is apparently retired. We're a little far away to spy on him," I pointed out.

"Well… how did, um, your grandfather get that information the first time? Couldn't he do it again?" Will asked diffidently.

"He got it from a citizen, one of the Weaponmaster's servants," I told them, and everyone sighed in exasperation. Citizens were _not_ supposed to get involved in superhero/supervillain conflicts, and there was no way we could ask one to spy for us. It would be monumentally dangerous and irresponsible, assuming we could even contact said citizen.

"Ok, ok, then maybe Principal Powers knows someone who can help us," Will said reasonably. "And then we have to convince her that _we_ can help too. I don't want to be left out. I mean, she wasn't going to tell us about Royal Pain's academy until Coach Boomer overheard us."

"I can think of a few people…" Ethan began, and then went off on a long lecture on various superheroes that could give us a hand. Despite the importance, I only gave him half an ear. We couldn't personally ask any of them for help; most of us were minors. I had my hero's license, but I still hadn't graduated. We didn't have anything in the way of legal authority to request help from the Bureau or commandeer any resources, short of an immediate, world-shaking crisis. So all of this was pure speculation until we got Powers' approval and help.

Ethan wound down eventually and we turned from speculative spying to our Superhero Geography homework. It sounded like a ridiculous class, but honestly, most supervillains choose large city centers or prominent power plants for their targets, and so we had to memorize the general street plans and blueprints for nearly two dozen major cities and facilities. More than one superhero had let a villain get away because they didn't know about a nearby airport, subway, or sewer connection.

I was working with Magenta and Zack on the complicated roads of Paris, while Trixie helped by occasionally batting Zack's pencil around.

"You seem really calm about all this," Magenta commented to me, as Zack desperately tried to locate L'Arc de Triomphe on the map.

"What I am supposed to do? Go around panicking all the time?" I asked reasonably, trying to distract Trixie from moving Zack's pushpins to different parts of the map.

"I dunno, I just somehow figured you'd be a lot more surly than usual," she said, smirking. I rolled my eyes.

"If someone really wants to find me, they'll find me. Just remember I'm expecting a spectacular rescue from the rest of you if that happens," I said, watching Zack searching the entirely wrong side of the river. Trixie succeeded in moving at least two pushpins while he wasn't looking, and now when he looked back at the things he was supposed to have marked off, he got the most confused look on his face.

"I just hope you don't get taken to Paris, because we're _never going to find you!"_ Magenta said, focusing the last words at Zack.

"I'm tryin', I'm tryin'!" he exclaimed. "Give me a hint?"

"Nope, you're supposed to be able to do this on your own," I said, suppressing a smirk as Trixie batted out another two pushpins.

"Ok, this is ridiculous. Zack should only have to deal with his _own_ problems, not your cat's too. Can't you control her?" Magenta demanded.

"Impossible," I said with a sigh.

"Fine, fine, I'll take care of this," she groused, and shifted. Trixie immediately lost interest in Zack's map and climbed down to give the guinea pig a thorough bath.

Zack finally found L'Arc de Triomphe ten minutes later.

* * *

The next day we made Will go see Mrs. Erickson and make the appointment with Principal Powers. He was still a little intimidated by her, even though we were on really good terms with the principal. But he couldn't be the leader if he wasn't willing to do little things like, you know, _lead._

"But I could, what's the word? Delegate!" he had said triumphantly, when he was still hemming and hawing about it.

"Try it and I'll make you look bad by ignoring you," I warned him, and he gave it up. So it was shortly after school that we found ourselves in Powers' office again, with Will, Ethan, and Zack explaining what we had figured out about the Weaponsmaster last night.

"It was one of those things that was so blindingly obvious that we dismissed it immediately," Principal Powers said finally, sighing. Magenta smirked triumphantly. "But you're right, it makes far too much sense."

"So we do we do now?" Will asked, crossing his arms, looking a little belligerent.

"You think you know how this conversation is going to go, Mr. Stronghold?" she asked raising an eyebrow in a knowing way.

"Um…" Will trailed off, blushing.

"Let me see if I can guess. I'm supposed to say that we'll take it from here. You ask how you can help. I say that you need to be concentrating on school right now. You remind me that these threats and rumors affect your team personally. I claim that it's all under control. You point out that your group found out these connections in the first place, which puts you ahead of us in the game. I say we have more experience in this kind of thing. You protest, I pull rank and make you go back to class, and then you spend the rest of your non-existent free time trying to figure this out yourselves while simultaneously thinking I'm an idiot and hating my guts." She said all of that in one breath, too, pretty impressive.

"Ah…" Will couldn't even seem to come up with a counter for that. Neither could the rest of us, truth be told.

"Am I right?" she asked, and we all looked at each other dumbly.

"Do you know why I'm not going to do that?"

"…Nope," Will said finally.

"You kids are smart. You're special. You handled a very bad situation with a great deal of poise and skill, and handled it far better than some experienced heroes I know. What I ended up forcing you into has given you a professional rivalry before you're even out of school. You might have resented me for that, or even hated me. But instead you've stepped up.

"The people at this school are following your example. I'm sure you've noticed how much better our senior groups have gotten since you started. And it's not only because they were embarrassed to get defeated by sophomores, or realized how unprepared they really were. It's also because they've seen how _you've_ stepped up to the plate, and they're eager to show they can do the same. All of you are doing an excellent job of _leading_ , and I can't thank you enough for that," she explained.

Will was blushing; I think most of us were.

"Look, I can help with this, but I want to ask you to be patient. Even if the academy graduates their students in the spring like we do, I think they're going to delay, to give people time to become complacent. We won't let that happen, because we're going to need every scrap of time we can get.

"Now, you've been hunting through Bureau records and doing everything you can on your end to help." Principal Powers flicked her eyes over to me briefly when she said that, and I tried not to smirk.

"When I tell you that I'm going to need to talk with some people and have them take it from there, I'm not trying to brush you off or be overly protective. What's going to happen is we're going to start spying on the Weaponsmaster. For that we need people that are skilled and experienced in that kind of work, have the time available for a long-term mission, and are also familiar with the area he lives and works in. Since he lives in Switzerland, I'm not keeping you out of this just to keep you out.

"I'm keeping you out because right now there are people who can do this job much better than you. Eventually, Miss Patterson, Mr. Howard, you might become good at this kind of work. But for now, I want experts on this. Do you understand?"

"Who are you going to send?" Ethan asked.

"Mind Mist and The Ghost," she said, and Ethan nodded knowingly.

"They're the best," he said to us, and the rest of us nodded finally in agreement.

"What else is going on? Is there anything else we _can_ do right now?" Layla asked. "You look kind of tired, Principal Powers."

Powers gave us a wan smile, and now I could see what Layla was talking about. Fatigue was in every line of her face, mostly hidden by make-up, but when you looked closely at her, she looked exhausted.

"I am, Miss Evans. This has been my most difficult year as the principal of Sky High in my twelve years as an administrator," she said with a sigh, dropping her head for a minute. When she lifted it again, she looked oddly determined, as if she had just made an important decision.

"Do you want to know why?" she asked.

"Sure," Layla said with a nod, and Powers waved as us to take a seat.

"Being the principal of one of the superhero high schools is nearly the equivalent of a directorship in the Bureau. Most people don't realize that unless they're in the system. We've tried to keep the schools as much like a normal high school as possible, to keep things for _you_ as normal as possible, and most superhero parents haven't thought about them any other way. They tend to forget that we're preparing their precious babies to go out and put their lives on the line, even with things like 'Save the Citizen' tournaments going on.

"When I switched the curriculum last year, everything thought it was a good idea because of what happened with Royal Pain. But when I told them what I had learned from Speed, Lash, and Penny about the about the academy, they called me crazy and paranoid. And when I told them how I had asked you to defend them, the rest of the community felt as if I had pulled a fast one on them. It wasn't until they had seen the tapes before they truly believed everything I was doing."

"Crazy and paranoid?" Zack asked.

"I'm afraid so. I did not want to subject the rest of you to a public inquiry under those circumstances. That's why I haven't asked you to go in front of the school board until now. I had to make sure it was going to be a question and answer session about Cutter's Crew and not an interrogation into my fitness to lead Sky High. That would have been grossly unfair to you," she explained.

"Aw man… we've talked this to death," Zack complained, legitimately I might add.

"I know. I waited until now to ask you to make sure the questions would be about _you_ and not me. You're more confident now in your abilities, and I think that will help you in front of the board."

"They're going to ask if we thought we were prepared though, right?" Will asked.

"Most likely. Don't feel you have to defend me, or demonize me, or anything. Just say what you know to be true. I'll take care of myself," she said with a soft smile.

"So… When do you think you'll know anything about the Weaponsmaster?" Will asked after an awkward silence.

"Hopefully we should be able to find something in under a week. I'll let you know as soon as we know anything."

"How're you doing though? With everything?" Layla asked with concern.

"Well enough, Miss Williams. I know I'm supposed to be keeping a proper appearance of respect and authority, which does not include letting children under my jurisdiction be privy to my personal opinions and problems. However, you know, better than some right now, how much the superhero world is changing. I'm not going to sit up on my high horse and refuse all help when it's just a few words away.

"We're supposed to be preparing all of you to be superheroes, and my students shouldn't go around believing it's all fun and games and no one ever has any problems with it. Just because everything has gone fine up until now doesn't mean we should be complacent. What you've done, taking it upon yourselves to figure out your own problems, lets me know that I've succeeded. Thank you for that," she said with a solemn nod at us.

 _Wow, ok, I don't think I've gotten an accolade like that out of anyone but my mom…_ I thought faintly, very surprised that Principal Powers would be willing to see her in any kind of vulnerable position.

"Take my word for it, stay active heroes. The stress on the body may be a little more, but at least you don't have to worry about politics so much! Your parents were much smarter than me, Mr. Stronghold," she added, and Will blushed a bit.

"I'll expect you to be ready to talk to the board on Wednesday night at seven. Now, go home, and don't think this lets you off the hook for class either!"

* * *

Wednesday night was nerve-wracking. We had found out we would be facing the school board alone, and Ethan had nearly had a panic attack when he learned that. Well, ok, we probably all had small, private panic attacks. We had kind of counted on being able to back each other up if necessary, but we simply gritted our teeth and bore it. What were we going to do otherwise, refuse to talk? Yeah, that would have given the school board a _wonderful_ impression of our maturity.

Our parents were actually not allowed to attend, or even to talk with us between questions, so we had been dropped off at the Bureau office downtown amidst hugs and flurries of encouraging words. It hadn't made a lot of difference in the way I was feeling, not with knowing who we were going to be facing. Not even my mom's words of courage were denting my rising wave of unease.

Will was the first one to go in, entering the massive doors of one of the conference rooms with a lot more confidence than I was feeling. The rest of us really couldn't think of anything to say to each other, and spent the tedious minutes in awkward silence. It must have been a good fifteen or twenty minutes before Will emerged again, breathing a sigh of relief. He didn't say anything while the door was still open, but he grimaced and made a "so-so" gesture with his hand at our looks of inquiry.

"Mr. Peace? Please come in," a voice drifted out. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and walked in, the doors slamming shut behind me.

I looked at the board members and seriously considered walking out and asking Will if he could fly me home. First off, everyone was in costume, which didn't help me relax any. Second, Crimson Tempus was there. Third, I recognized all the other members, most of them contemporaries of the Commander and Jetstream; people whose kids went to school with me, kids who still avoided me wherever I went. I couldn't exactly have the best reputation in their parents' eyes, no matter what Principal Powers had told them about me. Or what my mother had said; she was rather undeniably biased when it came to me.

Copper Flash, with her super-speed, Gale Force, with her wind-control, The Lynx, with his mountain-lion shapeshifting, Zodiac Salvo, with his prophetic powers, and Karma, with her ability to alter luck, all together they made a very intimidating bunch to face. I was used to throttling down anger though, and I could throttle down this fear too. I didn't like facing superheroes of my dad's generation, because most of them had taken Baron Battle's defection to the dark side as a personal affront. And some took my existence as a personal affront, just on general principle.

The few I had met, primarily my friends' parents, had been fairly nice to me, mostly because we had met after the first Royal Pain incident. But I couldn't let myself forget how the great majority of the superhero community still viewed me. Mrs. Olsen had made that abundantly clear in nearly exactly those words. And the first time I had been to the Maxville Bureau office, there were veiled glances in plenty that let me know I wasn't quite trusted.

"Mr. Peace, do you know the reason for this inquiry?" Gale Force opened.

"You had questions about Cutter's Crew," I said simply, and as neutrally as I could.

"Questions about your actions in your battle against Cutter's Crew. Because we've never had superheroes this young in action before, we want to clarify a few things. Now, how did you learn about Royal Pain's academy?"

I quickly told them how Will had figured it out one night while we were studying, how Boomer had overheard us the next day, and how, after taking us to Powers, she had requested our help in protecting Speed, Lash, and Penny.

"Did it occur to you that you had the right to refuse anything you were requested to do if you deemed it too dangerous?" Copper Flash asked.

"I knew we could. But why would we? They needed our help, and I knew Principal Powers was desperate if she was asking us," I said.

"Desperate? In what way?" Zodiac Salvo said, nearly pouncing on my words.

"She was worried that there were spies at the school, and so it was either use us or have the academy attack us all unprepared," I said with dangerous calm. The school board members looked at each other for a moment and turned to write things down. Crimson Tempus actually gave me an encouraging wink, which startled me.

"Did the rest of your team know about the possibility of spies? Did any of them question Principal Powers' request at all?" Lynx asked. I shook my head to both, and Gale Force asked the next question.

"Why were you the only one she told about the possibility of spies?"

"I stayed around after everyone else left to go to the Gauntlet room, because I remember thinking it was strange. She told me after I asked her. I didn't tell anyone else because the rest of them aren't that great at keeping secrets," I explained, and Copper Flash repressed a smirk. I relaxed marginally.

"Now, I understand you're the designated second-in-command?" Karma asked, and at my nod, went on. "The board was fairly impressed with the way you handled your team after Mr. Stronghold was tagged by Bloodtalon. However, we do have some questions about your tangle with Cutter…"

She turned and pressed a button on a remote, bringing up the short segment of the Homecoming tapes where Cutter had tried to attack me, and I had burned her. Then again when she had marched in Zack and Magenta.

"Why didn't you try to take her down the moment she got into the gym, instead of talking to her? You had secondary orders to capture these people," Lynx asked, glaring at me with yellow eyes.

"She… hadn't done anything yet," I said quietly, and trailed off. Yeah, I could have started flaming her the second she appeared. I _knew_ what she had done to Penny; it wasn't like I had to wait for her to start breaking any laws before swinging into action.

"Go on Mr. Peace," Crimson Tempus spoke up for the first time.

"I'd have to of stopped fueling the firewall if I attacked her. We told Speed, Lash, and Penny to not break the ring unless we told them or everything went south. Zack blinded both her and Painbreaker, and he was going to stun them once he had a clear shot. But… you saw the tapes. Zack got taken down, Magenta got hurt, and I figured as long as she was talking, she couldn't attack," I said carefully. _Hindsight is always perfect. Why the hell are they grilling us like this?_

"And you consider burning Cutter to be an appropriate use of your powers?" Lynx demanded. I felt heat flash briefly along my arms before I squelched it mentally.

"Nearly any time I use my powers I'm going to burn someone. Should I have just not used them at all?" I asked a little sharply. What did they expect me to say? _No, I'd much rather have negotiated her surrender with my astounding diplomatic skills._ Yeah, right.

Lynx got a sour expression on his face, but Gale Force leaned over and said something in his ear, and he dropped whatever it was he was going to say next.

"Mr. Peace, at the end of the fight, when Mr. Cramer had been captured-," Karma started.

"I froze. I got scared and I froze," I said quickly, not waiting for her to finish the sentence. My stomach was starting to roil a little at the line of questioning. I knew we had all talked about a lot of this back in Yellowstone, but it had been in a simple way, in a non-threatening environment. I felt myself getting worried for Ethan in particular; it had been hard enough to explain to _us_ why he had froze, how would it be in front of a much less sympathetic audience?

Karma looked surprised, as if she hadn't expected me to admit to being less than perfect.

"And you let your three charges out of the ring to help you?" Copper Flash asked, picking up from Karma's silence.

"Things were pretty far south at that point. They were protecting themselves, like they were supposed to," I said.

The board put their heads together for a minute, and then Zodiac Salvo took up the next question.

"Last question, did you feel Sky High prepared your adequately for your fight?"

"Yes," I said. "They had us running sessions in the Gauntlet for a week to help us get ready. If we hadn't had that time, I don't think we would have survived. Four teachers actually fought against us in our last runs to make it as real as possible."

Crimson Tempus nodded at the others as they went back to writing notes, then waved at me in what was clearly a dismissal. I heard him calling for Layla as I stepped out of the room, my expression fairly black. I slammed myself down on the bench outside with the others, heat radiating off of me like a campfire for the next few minutes until the last of my temper cooled.

"So… not so great?" Will asked finally.

"Stupid crap questions. I don't even know why we're here," I said a little darkly. There wasn't much they learned from me, at least in my mind, that they couldn't have learned from the tapes, our teachers, and having an open mind. I didn't really like getting up in front of groups of people, particularly not when they kept looking at me the way they did. Like they were just waiting for me to screw up… I was seriously looking forward to the day when I graduated and could start proving myself. Because right now, they were still waiting for me to go villain.

Layla came out looking mostly composed, Magenta was completely unruffled, Zack came out looking rather frazzled, and Ethan (whom I had warned about the line of questioning) walked out with an oddly triumphant look on his face, like he had just won a round of Champion Debate.

"So… What happened?" Zack asked him finally, as we were taking the elevator up.

"Yeah, they asked me about freezing up. Thanks for the heads-up Warren," he said, and fell silent again.

"And…?" Zack pressed.

"I had kind of figured someone was going to ask me about it eventually. Officially, I mean. So I've been kind of having this conversation over and over again as practice for a while. I had some expert help," he explained.

"Like from who?" Zack asked.

"…Chloe," he said quickly and quietly.

"Whoa! Chloe, like the tall chick we met in Yellowstone?" Zack demanded.

"Yeah… We're kind of… going out…" Ethan said, quieter and quieter.

"Way to go my man!" Zack said, thumping him on the back. Ethan only blushed a little and looked at his shoes.

"So, spill!" Layla demanded. I was very carefully trying not to smirk my face off in the corner of the elevator. Normally I didn't care for a lengthy trip in a confined space, but this was far too choice to be bothered by that now!

"Um… er… we started calling a little after Yellowstone. And IMing, and e-mailing. I, um, asked her to help me with this as… kind of a theoretical project. It wasn't hard for her, because she's a law student; she does this kind of thing all the time," he explained.

"She's gonna be a lawyer? Sorry dude, she's evil, gotta dump her," Zack said, and Ethan and Magenta smacked him simultaneously.

" _Anyway_ , so when my family went to New York for Christmas, I got to meet her again. We went out to see The Nutcracker together."

"Dude, you're dedicated," Zack said solemnly. Ethan didn't dignify that with a response.

"We were walking back to her apartment-." This time Magenta stepped on Zack's foot before he could make a bad joke. "-and someone tried to mug us."

"You didn't say anything about this over Christmas!" Layla exclaimed, looking shocked.

"Well, let me explain! This guy had a knife, and tried to drag us into an alley. I was going to melt and let him have a stun cap; I figured I could try to explain to Chloe later. Then Chloe just… She just steps up, kicks the guy twice and puts him on his back, then calmly pulls out her phone to call the police! She told me later she's been taking karate lessons ever since she had to be rescued by my dad, because she didn't want to be another 'helpless citizen.' So she was all scared and trying to protect _me!"_

Zack snorted first, then Will broke down, and soon the elevator was ringing with laughter.

"Dude… dude…" was all Zack could gasp out for the next few minutes. The rest of us couldn't even manage that much.

"And anyway, we've been going out ever since," he finished up.

"Boy meets girl, girl rescues boy, boy and girl start going out…" Magenta drawled, which started setting us off again.

"So, Chloe lives in New York City?" Layla asked, as the elevator opened up finally and we all trooped out.

"Yeah, we've been doing the long-distance relationship thing. But um… she's going to be in Maxville this summer," Ethan said quickly. "She has an internship at Studebaker, Steinway, and Cline."

"Way to go dude!" Zack said, putting Ethan in a headlock for a noogie. Ethan casually melted out of his grasp, leaving Zack holding empty air.

"Thanks," Ethan said with more confidence, resolidifying on Zack's other side. Magenta laughed at the expression on Zack's face and stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the nose.

"Give him a break, or I will," she warned him, and Zack tried to contain his enthusiasm.

Our somber mood from downstairs had been totally broken by Ethan's inadvertent confession, and we actually left the Bureau in a fairly cheerful frame of mind.

* * *

Whatever the school board had learned from us had apparently satisfied them that Principal Powers wasn't crazy and paranoid, or using the students to build her own private army, or whatever else they were trying to find out from us. Powers lost most of her pinched and harried look in the following week.

Eventually she let us know that Mind Mist and The Ghost were firmly entrenched in the Weaponmaster's house. However, while they were certain he _did_ have connections to the academy (due to some overheard comments), they still weren't able to locate it yet. They were fairly certain he was actually going to go there for their graduation ceremony though, which meant that right after our _own_ ceremony, we should finally have an idea of where the academy actually was. But until then, we all just had to wait.

For the rest of us, the last few months until summer vacation were busy, but we began to really gel as a team. We still lost sometimes to the senior groups, even with Will on the offensive, but privately we considered that a good thing. If the seniors could beat Will, they could take on anyone the academy could throw at them. Besides, anyone from the academy wouldn't have the benefit of actually being able to _practice_ against someone like Stronghold, which put them in the same situation the senior groups the first time Will had gone offensive; unprepared.

Despite our steady stream of close wins and near losses, I was getting more and more nervous the closer graduation came. It wasn't that I was going to be saying good-bye to Sky High forever. I would still be coming here nearly every day to practice with my team until _they_ graduated. But I would still be expected to do some hero work on my own, and it was scaring the living daylights out of me. I put in some individual time with Coach Boomer on solo Gauntlet runs, the kind I used to do back in my first two years here, to get back into the habit of watching my own back.

The others wouldn't let me brood on my future too much, catching me up in the end-of-the-year festivities, making me help them on their homework, helping me on _my_ night class homework, and generally making themselves such a nuisance that I didn't have _time_ to be very nervous.

The graduation ceremony at Sky High was, poetically, a lot like Power Placement. You stood on the center stage, did a quick change into your costume, and told everyone your superhero name while demonstrating your power. In past times, that was also when your Sidekick was announced as well, though that obviously wouldn't be happening this year. I had voluntarily chosen to forgo the formal public ceremony because the rest of my group wouldn't be graduating for another two years.

However, Principal Powers was going to let me have a little private ceremony in her office for my friends and my mom. I had been extremely careful about keeping both my costume and my superhero name secret from everyone until that day, just because I had wanted it to be a surprise to everyone.

I was oddly calm on graduation day, as if all the nervousness I had been feeling the past few months had finally burned itself out. I accepted my diploma from Principal Powers with a solemn handshake, actually smiling when my mom pulled out the inevitable camera and snapped a few pictures. Then I stepped behind the screen, and in a few seconds, stepped out the other side as a superhero.

My super-suit was a rich red from gauntlets to boots, faint touches of ghostly yellow flames flowing along the arms and hands, with an orange and yellow firebird spreading its wings across the chest. I had a red helmet and half-mask sculpted into the crest and beak of a fantastic bird, its eyes covered with golden lenses, the cloth feathers of red, orange, and yellow trailing down my neck.

I took a deep breath and powered up, flames engulfing my arms and hands, looking as if they belonged. Principal Powers was looking at me with unabashed pride. _Probably thinking how she never thought she'd see me this way after throwing me in detention last year._ Will was grinning his usual goofy grin, echoed by Layla's brighter one. Zack was glowing as well as grinning, and Magenta's smile had no trace of sarcasm about it at all. Ethan's smile was just as wide as Zack's; though I could also tell he was trying to figure out what my entry in the Illustrated Lives of Superheroes was going to look like.

I finally caught my mother's bright smile, her eyes suspiciously wet. I could feel an outpouring of love and pride coming from her, shared by her powers, and I stood tall and proud as I announced my superhero identity for the first time.

"I am Phoenix."

 _Flames rising from the ashes, fires of renewal, burning away all impurities._ How long I had debated on my superhero name, I couldn't even say, but soon after I had discovered my new power, there hadn't been any other choice.

_I can prove myself now. All the things my friends have done; they've given me everything I need._

_I can do this._

_I_ am _Phoenix._


	24. Graduation Gift

"Why is he waiting?" Will asked.

Principal Powers was actually in the Stronghold's Secret Sanctum, having been invited there by the Commander and Jetstream to give us our latest information on the Weaponsmaster, not a day after graduation. For some reason he hadn't left his home to travel to the academy graduation ceremony yet, and she wanted to let us know why.

"Apparently the graduation is being delayed. The classes were suspended sometime early last fall for a 'field trip,' which put everyone somewhat behind in their studies. So in order to make sure everyone completes their courses, graduation is being delayed two weeks," Powers said with a rather odd expression on her face, something between triumph and pain.

"The assassination attempts," I said succinctly. She nodded.

"Which puts you all in the clear until late June, at least. If you were going to take any vacations, I'd suggest you do it now rather than later. I hate to think you'd have to interrupt your summer vacation to go up against her students, but we can't afford to be anything less than prepared. She might still keep delaying in an attempt to have us forget her academy exists, but she doesn't know we're watching one of her conspirators. We'll have plenty of notice when they're finally ready," she said.

"That's a relief," Layla said, gaining a little of her cheer back.

"Yeah, I actually… had a vacation planned for right now too," I said, and everyone turned to stare at me. "My grandfather is having me come over to his estates in Europe as a graduation gift."

"Hey, why didn't you say anything before?" Will demanded, looking a little hurt. I just glared at him, but he didn't look like he was backing down.

"Because you'd've tried to talk me out of it," I told him. He opened his mouth once, and then shut it again. "Besides, I should go and meet the rest of them at least once."

"Well, just because you're going overseas doesn't mean you're getting out of your responsibilities. Here," Powers said, dropped something in my hand. A red cellphone. "Don't forget, you're on call now."

* * *

"Warren, pack the tux," Mom said from the doorway. I turned back to look at her, pained. I had finally finished throwing the rest of my clothes in the suitcase and didn't want to have to cram even more stuff in there.

"Seriously. They dress for dinner," she elaborated. I groaned a little at that.

"With all the silverware and courses and crap?" I asked. She nodded and I sighed and went to get my dad's old suit.

"I made Tobias promise to keep his opinions to himself. He's very used to being the king of his castle, but I pointed out that if he tried to _make_ you conform to a dress code or something you'd probably just make him look bad by disobeying," she added, and I smiled a bit. Mom knew me very well indeed.

"Thanks," I told her.

"And you're taking a Bureau jet," she added. I looked at her with surprise.

"I thought that was just for official business," I said. I knew Mom took them all the time when she went over to Europe for her work, but a vacation could hardly qualify.

"One, Tobias pulled some strings. Two, what do you think would be easier for you? Sitting in a tiny seat next to a screaming child for eight hours with lines of pure oxygen running above your head? Or two hours in a large comfortable seat with plenty of space and a quiet environment?" she asked. I actually shuddered when she described the first one. I'd never flown before, and being in a small space for eight hours would probably send me into a screaming claustrophobic fit that would end in fiery destruction for all.

"Uh… yeah," I said slowly.

"Baron only flew twice when I was with him. The first time was on a commercial airliner on his way out here to attend Sky High. He told me he nearly torched the plane. When we moved to Europe, he insisted on a Bureau jet or nothing," she said simply. I didn't have an answer for that, so I simply finished zipping up the suitcase. Mom came into the room and handed me my passport.

"I had that done yesterday. The Bureau can move very fast when it wants to," she said, and then pulled me in for a hug. "I'm so _proud_ of you Warren."

I hugged her fiercely back and gave her quick kiss.

"Thanks Mom."

* * *

The plane ride over was just as easy as Mom had made it sound, and I decided I could get used to traveling like a superhero. Having seen in a few films of how small a normal plane was, I was very much relieved at being able to use the Bureau jet. The luxury felt kind of undeserved, but since the alternative was so much worse, I just kept my thoughts to myself. At least I didn't have to go through most of the security that normal citizens did, for which I was grateful. I could just imagine how answering their questions would have gone.

" _Are you carrying any weapons on board?"_

" _I'm a human flame-thrower, does that count?"_

Yeah, that wouldn't have gone over so well.

They say the first view of the ocean is supposed to be dramatic or something, but I suppose after flying over it for a couple of hours it loses its mystique. _Well, that's a lot of water. Yup, definitely a lot of water._ Maybe if I had been in a boat or something it might have been more interesting, but right now all it was was an unvarying landscape below me. But when we made our approach over the continent as darkness fell, then it got more interesting. The lights of dozens of citizens flashed below the jet, looking like a faint dusting of glittering ice against the dark ground.

The plane slowed as we reached Berlin; the Battle estate was just outside it, and it apparently had its own airstrip. I supposed that must have been useful when they needed to get somewhere fast; not everyone had a Jetstream around to transport them. The lights from the city faded behind us as we made our final approach, and within a few more minutes we had touched down. I grabbed my bag and took a last deep breath as the stairs were put down, and finally walked out of the plane.

Tobias was waiting just outside in the hangar, a limousine and driver standing by discretely. He smiled rather broadly at me, though I kept my own expression neutral. My coming here hadn't been for some big family reunion. It had been partially out of curiosity, and partially for reasons I didn't fully understand myself. But it wasn't to make nice with Tobias.

"Warren, how very nice to see you again," he said, extending a hand. Ignoring it would have been petty and rude, though I was tempted anyway. I clasped his hand briefly, resisting his efforts to pull me in for a hug or something. He was stronger than he looked, but I was stronger than him. Tobias only raised an eyebrow and then waved me to the car.

"How was the flight?"

"Fine," I said shortly, settling myself in the cavernous vehicle. The driver turned the car around and headed out of the hangar, starting down the long road to the front gate.

"I understand it was your first time flying."

"It was fine," I repeated, a little sharply.

"I see," he said calmly and lapsed into silence as we wound down the tree-shrouded lane. As we reached the front gate, flanked by two huge, dramatic torches on top, I saw the massive stone archway was inscribed in what I thought was Latin. I had no idea what it said, but I caught myself staring at it anyway as the driver punched in the code to open the gate.

"It's the family motto. It translates into 'Alone we burn wood, together we melt steel,'" Tobias said quietly as we drove through.

"Family loyalty?" I asked him.

"For the most part, yes, that's what it means," he said with a sigh.

"I hope you don't have high expectations," I told him, and he turned to look at me sharply. "For this week," I clarified. Tobias nodded stiffly, and then changed the subject.

"We'll be having dinner in two hours. I'll have Chester show you to your room and give you time to get settled in. Oh, and it looks like young Thomas _is_ going to be pyrokinetic. He's already definitely indestructible, but he hasn't powered up fully yet. I don't know when that will happen, but I thought you'd like to know."

I nodded idly at resumed looking out the window. It took me several minutes to understand what I was seeing, and when I did I sat bolt upright.

"This place is _huge_ ," I said, trying to take in the size of the building at the end of the lane by the lights alone. It looked bigger than the school, bigger than the museum in downtown Maxville. It looked just like some kind of medieval castle, minus the electric lights, complete with portcullis and drawbridge.

"We all live here, all my children, and all of theirs as well," he said simply.

"Why?"

"Why not? We all work in the same business, we certainly have the room, and none of us have much in the way of a secret identity to protect. Publicly the Battle family is a bunch of philanthropists, and we stay out of the public eye. Otherwise we simply work on being the best heroes we can be."

I clenched my jaw at those words, echoes of my own thoughts, just out of reflex.

"The estate has been in our family for nearly ten generations. It would be a pity to let it molder while everyone went off to find their own little homes and apartments all over the known world. Besides, it would be a rather difficult task to gather everyone up for a job if we were scattered. Not to mention this estate is equipped to handle those with emerging powers," Tobias went on blithely.

I rode in silence the rest of the way, listening vaguely to the history of the Battle estate, more lost in my own thoughts than anything. _Why the hell did I agree to come?_ I asked myself again.

Staring at the estate, brooding in the darkness, the reasons started to become clear to me. Yes, part of it was simply curiosity; wanting to meet the relatives I'd never known. Part of it was because I'd never really traveled before. Tobias' request was also a factor. He had been trying to manipulate me, to a greater or lesser extent, from the day we'd met, but his intentions weren't _completely_ selfish. And a very large part of it, I now realized, was because I _had_ to see where my father had grown up. Was there something here that had made him what he was? I needed to know what had happened here. But I damn sure wasn't going to tell Tobias about my intentions.

The driver pulled up at the massive front doors, and had our doors open and my suitcase out of the trunk and on his shoulders before I could even protest. It felt like walking into some kind of haunted castle as we ascended the staircase, and the doors swung open before anyone could even touch them. Then I spied Tobias putting something back in his pocket and realized it must be a remote for the doors, probably part of the security system. I smirked a little, but tried to hide it. One mystery revealed. Tobias was trying almost too hard to impress me.

A short man in a butler's uniform nearly pounced on Tobias the moment he entered the door, rapidly firing off a series of questions or something in German, while I could only listen in bewilderment. After a few moments Tobias waved the man to silence and then turned to me in exasperation.

"I have to deal with a small crisis here, Warren. James, just leave the bag here and go finish your duties. Chester should be here any moment to help you to your rooms Warren, just wait until he gets here," Tobias said quickly, and then briskly walked off with the shorter guy. James, the driver, set my suitcase down quickly, gave me a bow, and then walked back down the stairs.

I was too busy taking in the scenery to ask any further questions, or to even formulate a coherent thought. Walking into this place was like walking into some kind of movie set. There might have been electric bulbs in the chandeliers, but other than that there was no way to tell that this was _not_ a medieval castle. Polished, carved wood was everywhere, stone carvings, elaborate tapestries, and elegant furniture…

It was such a big contrast to what I had grown up with, and it still easily outshone where I lived now. It occurred to me that my dad must have never, ever in his life lacked for anything he wanted... I must have looked like some kind of rubbernecking tourist as I gaped at the entry hall. I was so engrossed that I nearly missed the arrival of a middle-aged man in yet another butler's uniform, his pale blonde hair a sharp contrast to the dark wood and stone around him.

"Master Peace? I'm Chester, Master Tobias assigned me to you for the duration of your stay," he said politely. _Master Peace? Argh, that's even worse than my real name!_ I thought, irritation interrupting my thoughts. It wasn't this guy's fault, but… seriously.

"Umm… thanks. You can call me Warren," I offered, and went to pick up my suitcase. Chester forestalled me.

"That's my job, Master Warren," he said, and smoothly shouldered it. "If you would please follow me?" I sighed and complied.

I could have grabbed my own stuff. I could have been a lot ruder to Chester to get him to leave me alone. But judging from the size of this place, if I didn't want to get lost and starve to death, I had better can my attitude for a short while and try to stay calm. I could either work myself into a frenzy of resentment, or suck it up and realize that the Battle family was so different from me they were almost a different species. The attitude I had affected in high school would not work here, something that was being driven home to me with every step. I followed Chester up the stairs, past paintings and pictures of people whom I presumed were my ancestors, and huge battle scenes of people with fire-wreathed hands fighting back dragons and demons. I found myself wondering how much of that was artistic license and how much might have been from real life.

Finally Chester stopped at the end of the hall and opened a door into a room, waving me in with a bow. The place was as medieval as the rest of the house, decorated in red and gold, a massive carved wooden bed dominating the room, and a huge fireplace with a fire crackling merrily away on one wall.

"Here you are Master Warren," he said, coming in after me. Before I could even stop him, he had opened my suitcase and was starting to put my clothes away in the wardrobe and bureau.

"Look, you don't have to do that…" I said, stepping forward fast. I really didn't like people handling my stuff. He waved me off in a no-nonsense manner that reminded me of Principle Powers at her most imposing.

 _It's not going to kill me to let him do this,_ I told myself firmly, keeping my temper in check. If Will had been in this situation, he would have been gracious. Layla or Ethan would have insisted on helping. Zack and Magenta would have considered it their just due, and probably asked him to bring them a pizza while he was at it. I had more important things to get worked up over than what this butler considered just doing his job.

"It's my job, Master Warren," he repeated, in an echo of my thoughts, and kept going with a brisk efficiency that made my head spin. In less than a minute he had everything in its place, though he kept out my suit. "I'll just go get this steamed and pressed before dinner."

With that he swept out again, and I sat back in a chair, feeling very much like I had just been run over by a truck. _Who's running this house, them or Tobias?_ If my dad had grown up being waited on hand and foot like this, I could suddenly see why he'd gotten some of those ideas into his head.

I shook my head and pulled out my computer, gingerly looking behind the desk and gratefully finding a socket. I plugged in the adapter and sent off a quick e-mail to let Mom know I was ok, taking a small amount of comfort in something as normal as a computer in the midst of all this ancient finery and uncomfortable realizations. I heard a faint throat-clearing behind me, and I whirled, dreading the ultra-efficient Chester had returned. I was surprised instead to find a little boy of about eight standing in my doorway.

"Are you my Uncle Warren?" he asked very politely. I blinked twice at that before my brain finally caught on.

"You're Thomas," I said, and he nodded. Well, very technically I wasn't an uncle, but the weird permutations of relations I had suddenly been burdened with didn't bear thinking about too closely. If he wanted to call me "uncle," fine with me. I certainly wasn't going to quibble about it.

"Hi," he said simply, and began to rock back and forth on his feet, his hands clasped behind him. He didn't take a single step into the room, which was kind of unusual. Ethan and Magenta's younger cousins had zero respect for personal space when they wanted something. Then again, the Battle family seemed a lot stricter...

"You can come in," I told him, realizing he was waiting for permission, and he suddenly scampered into the room as if released from a tether. He didn't really look that much like me. He was several shades lighter in both skin and hair, and a lot scrawnier than I had ever been at that age. I didn't see any of the telltale red streaks in his short brown hair though, and idly wondered how they had figured out he was indestructible already.

"You're going to teach me?" he asked, bouncing again on his feet.

"I guess, I mean, when you power up," I said with a shrug. Thomas was looking at my long hair, leather jacket, and tattooed wrists with fascination, and I was hard-pressed not to chuckle. The kid looked like he had just gotten home from a private school, with the neatly pressed slacks and button-down shirt. I got the impression that jeans and t-shirts didn't make much of an appearance in the Battle house.

"Can you teach me to do it your way?" he asked quickly.

"Like what way?" I inquired.

"Like what you did with the guinea pig girl," he explained, and I had a sinking sensation in my stomach. _Why the hell did Tobias let this kid see the tape from last Homecoming? That's pretty damn brutal for adults, let alone kids!_ Not to mention the fact that as far as anyone knew, I was unique in the power department. Why get Thomas' hopes up that he could suddenly develop my powers?

"I don't know. I don't think I can," I told him. "I can only do that because of who my mom is." I hated to burst the kid's bubble, but better now than have him actually attempt it on someone someday.

"Uncle Baron's wife. We're not supposed to talk about him or her, Great-Grandfather says," Thomas said, and then clapped his hands over his mouth. _Yeah, I don't imagine my parents are exactly light dinnertime conversation…_

"It's ok, don't worry about it," I told him. I was getting the impression that Tobias ruled with an iron fist in this house, which pretty much jived with what my mom had told me. Thomas relaxed a half-fraction at my easy answer, and then began to pelt me with questions about when I had first powered up. The kid seemed absolutely determined to figure out a way to trigger his powers as soon as possible, but the last thing he needed was to power up the way I had the first time. Maybe the Battle family's normal pyrokinesis wasn't as linked to emotions as mine was, but there was still no need for Thomas to try to power up in anger.

It was strange, but I found myself leaning back more and more on what my father had told me the one time I had seen him. His powers were so much more deliberate than mine, and a lot more easily controllable, from what he had told me. Thomas was listening so very carefully to everything I told him, with such a very fierce expression of concentration on his face, that we both jumped in surprise when someone else cleared his throat at the doorway.

Chester was back, holding my suit in one hand and giving us both a very long-suffering look.

"Young Master Thomas, your mother is looking for you. It's nearly time to dress for dinner, scoot!" he said briskly, and Thomas bounded out the door with a wave. Chester stalked over to me with the suit, and I started to get apprehensive.

"Here you are Master Warren. Will you need assistance dressing?" he asked with an oddly superior sniff.

"Uh…" I stalled, having no idea what to say to that. Why would anyone, who wasn't able, not be able to dress themselves?

"Then if not, I shall be waiting outside to guide you to the dining room," he said simply, and vanished.

 _This isn't going to go well at all…_ I felt like I had just been dropped in the middle of some kind of fairy tale or secret society, where everyone knew the rules but me. I shrugged off my jacket and finally got myself into the suit. I hadn't worn the thing since Homecoming two years ago, and I was guessing part of Chester's superior attitude had been because the belt I was using was the same metal-studded black leather one I used for my jeans. That probably Wasn't Done here, but I seriously did not care at this point. I had enough on my mind already.

I stepped outside a few minutes later, and Chester gave me a once over and uttered another long-suffering sigh.

"Hey, what the-. Hey!" I said, as he leaned in and proceeded to straighten out my tie and jacket to his satisfaction. I jumped back out of his range, a fast-repressed flash of heat warming the air around me. The reflexes that Coach Boomer had pounded into me did not account for other people trying to fix my clothes; I had nearly floored Chester automatically.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded. Didn't this guy work with superheroes every day? Were they actually _used_ to someone treating them like a stupid five-year-old that couldn't dress themselves yet?

"Just making sure the young master is presentable at dinner," he said calmly. "Are you in need of a hair tie?"

"I… am not," I said after a second. _I've died and gone to hell…_ I thought faintly. _And it doesn't have my dad, just this crazy butler!_ Chester simply gave another sigh, shrugged, and turned smartly on his heel.

"If you will follow me then, Master Warren," he said, and marched off through the corridors. I thought about locking myself in the room for the rest of the week, but that probably wouldn't work. I had come here for a reason, and despite the fact that it wasn't looking to be easy, a hero couldn't just hide if things got tough. Nevertheless, I followed several steps behind, because I was afraid if I got too close Chester was going to pounce on me with a hair tie or something.

The more I saw of the building, the more impressed, and intimidated, I became. It was like a museum, each inch of it filled with something beautiful, historical, and probably fragile. I shied away from touching anything, even the tapestry-covered walls, as Chester finally led me downstairs to the massive dining room. My attitude was taking a beating, being crushed down by the sheer size and scope of everything around me. It was all making me feel small, and I was starting to hate that feeling immensely.

Apparently everyone else was already here, and I swallowed as I was finally seated at the massive table. Luckily the place wasn't decorated, as I had thought it would be, with game trophy heads or something else equally disturbing. Instead more large tapestries lined the walls, their subjects apparently being various Battle ancestors accepting accolades from monarchs. There was a fireplace in one wall large enough to serve as a small apartment, and massive candelabras set all on the long table lit the place with a warm glow.

Tobias stood up briefly as I entered and nodded in my direction. All along one side were all the men, and the women were on the other side. I recognized all of my powered relatives, but I honestly didn't know their non-powered spouses. Oddly enough, other than Baron and Tobias (who had married a cryokinetic named Elizabeth, or Arctica when she had been active), none of the other Battles had married someone with superpowers.

Down one side of the table were my father's brothers, arranged in descending order of age. I had forced myself to memorize them, studying them as hard as I had the supervillains I would eventually face; Reginald, who went by Fire King, Andrew, who was Fire Prince, David, who was the Burning Duke, Christopher, who was Fire Lord, and Anthony, who was Fire Knight. My two aunts were on the other side of the table, Bernadette, who was Ice Queen, and Lauren, who went by Tesla, and was the only electrokinetic in the family. Two cryokinetic cousins rounded out the powered part of the family, Ivana and Emily, who were Ice Princess and the Freezing Duchess respectively. Collectively the pyrokinetics were known as the Fire Court and the cryokinetics as Winter Court. If there had been more than one electrokinetic, they would have been called Storm Court, but that hadn't happened in generations.

All of them smiled at me and raised their glasses in some kind of salute. I just managed to nod back before more servants, though thankfully _not_ Chester, swarmed out with the first course. I looked down at my place setting and nearly choked, because there was enough silverware there to use for a twelve-person dinner party. I thought I remembered vaguely from books and movies that I was supposed to start from the outside and work my way in, but as the food kept coming out, I noticed I was always using the wrong damned fork.

I decided immediately I would sneak in a pair of chopsticks tomorrow. The food was actually pretty good, and I would rather be able to eat it instead of trying to fish through a mountain of silverware to find what I was supposed to be using. I finally gave up entirely halfway through the meal and just kept stubbornly using the same fork for everything.

Half the conversation at the table was in German, and I wasn't sure if that was because they were trying to ignore me, or if they had just forgotten that I wasn't fluent in that language. It turned out to be the latter as Anthony turned to me and asked me something in German and I stared back at him with complete non-comprehension.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Warren," he apologized immediately. "I forgot. You just look so much like Baron."

Silence descended at the head of the table, but Anthony was ignoring it. I repressed a smirk as I realized not everyone in this family jumped when Tobias said so. I ignored the comment about my father entirely. I _did_ look a lot like him. Hell, I could see echoes of him in the face of every man at the table.

"I was asking how you were liking the house," he went on. I shrugged.

"Impressive," I said sincerely. "Museum-like." _Overly large and soul-crushing too_ , I added mentally. I had decided I could probably stand to keep my tongue in neutral as much as possible while I was here. Never had I been farther out of my comfort zone, and I didn't want them to know hard this was for me. Perversely, I didn't want them to try to cater to me at all; I wanted to see the real Battle family as much as possible.

"It is that, isn't it? You see, Father? I told you," Anthony said with a very visible smirk, and there was some faint chuckling from further up the table.

"I'll take your redecorating designs under advisement," Tobias said very dryly, and conversation began again around him.

" _Do_ you speak any other languages?" Anthony asked, ignoring what was going on at the head of the table for the time being.

"Mandarin. I worked in a Chinese restaurant for five years," I told him, explaining before he could ask the inevitable question. He looked at me oddly. _I bet he's never had to work a day of menial labor in his life_ , I thought, catching his look of confusion. Everything about this estate and everyone in it just screamed to me of a level of luxury and privilege that I had never known, and it made me feel very alien. If Tobias had wanted me to begin feeling some kind of connection to this place, he had a lot to learn about me.

Oddly enough, once Anthony got over his initial confusion, he wasn't averse to asking me questions, or answering them himself. The rest of my relatives also started venturing questions as well, mostly asking about Sky High, and carefully keeping the subject off of anything to do with my parents. They were actually fairly polite and interested, and all seemed impressed when I described what Sky High had been doing to teach the kids in the past year and a half.

I found out that even though my uncles and aunts were pushing anywhere from sixty to fifty, all of them were still very active superheroes, and spent quite a long time in training. As a consequence, they actually wanted to use some of stuff that Sky High had in order to make their own training better. I found myself thinking what Boomer would make of nine high-powered, somewhat arrogant superheroes invading his Gauntlet. I thought the resulting fireworks would have been highly entertaining.

Somewhere near the end of the night Reginald even asked me about my superhero name, and nodded sagely when I told him.

"I was going to say that you were free to use your father's old name if you wanted to, but I must say Phoenix suits you far better than Red Knight," he said.

"If someone wants to use that name later, more power to them, but I really just want to make my own path," I told him honestly, and he gave a half-bow in my direction.

"An admirable goal," he said simply, looking sideways at Tobias, who stared at me as if I'd just grown a second head.

 _Figure_ that _out Grandpappy,_ I thought with a hastily repressed smirk. Tobias was starting to understand exactly whom he'd just invited into his house.

* * *

Despite the time zone difference, I slept pretty well that night, though I was up very early in the morning. Chester had told me to ring a bell next to the bed when I wanted him in the morning, but I was going to do that somewhere between never and eternity. I snuck around my room to get dressed, and quietly slipped out the door, sneaking down the hall to the kitchen. Or at least that was the plan, right up until I got lost. I think I passed the same gallery three times, and I know I passed the same lion tapestry five times, because I started keeping count. I was nearly at the point of starting to make scorch marks on the walls just to keep myself from walking in circles when Bernadette found me.

"Lost?" she asked simply.

"Is there a trick to it?" I asked desperately, embarrassingly glad to see another human face. "I was just trying to find something to eat."

"Other than memorizing which tapestries are at what corridor junctions, no," she said, and beckoned for me to follow her. I did, only because hunger was taking precedence over my pride at that point. "Watch, from the lion tapestry you take the second left past the unicorn tapestry, go down the stairs, take a right at the five dancing ladies, and that's _not_ to be confused with the five dancing nymphs, go past the leaping dragon, and here you are in the kitchen."

I blinked at her, as she had been walking so fast I nearly lost her once.

"That wasn't very enlightening," I told her with a bit of resentment, and she actually laughed, more at herself than at my confusion.

"I know, I'm sorry, I'm just so used to this… Whenever we hire new servants I think we lose two or three to starvation because they're lost wondering in the halls. Just ask who's ever assigned to you to show you the way," she said.

"That guy… weirds me out," I told her.

"Chester, right? Don't worry; he's always like that. He knows high society backwards and forwards, he just doesn't have a lot of patience for those who aren't born into it," she said.

 _Huh, like Mr. Medulla._ If you knew Mad Science, he could be your best friend. If you didn't, you were pond scum. Same thing, just different subject matter. Well, I knew how to deal with _that_ at least. Let them have their way until you could prove you knew what you were talking about. Trying to pretend to have expertise that they could call you on was the quickest way to becoming an unfortunate demonstration.

Bernadette turned to go, and I made a quick decision. I had my own little mission to fulfill while I was here, to find out more about my dad, and considering what I knew of Tobias, I'd have much better luck asking one of Baron Battle's siblings rather than his father.

"Hey, could I ask you something else?" I said. Bernadette looked back over her shoulder, and got an understanding look on her face.

"About Baron?" she asked. At the look of surprise on my face, she expanded, "I knew you'd ask eventually."

"And?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything," I said, letting out a huge breath. I hadn't quite expected it to be that easy, at least in my head. "I mean, I know almost nothing about him and why he-."

"You're not the only one who's wondered and worried about that. I remember Reggie asking aloud one time, just after they incarcerated our brother, if there was something in the blood, something wrong with us," she said, looking off into the distance.

I got a faint chill of doom down my back when she said that. " _Is_ there something wrong?"

"I certainly hope not! I just wanted to explain that we've all been thinking about him and what might have been going on in his head. It's just difficult for us to talk about it openly; we're just not used to it." Bernadette tapped her pursed lips with her finger, considering. "Anthony was the closest to Baron. I'll try to find some time to get you two alone. _Not_ when Father is around though. He only talks about Baron when it suits him. Until then, how about I give you a quick tour of the estate? This place is nearly impossible."

"Yeah… Thanks," I added.

"It's no problem. It's far less than what we should have done years ago. I hope you can forgive us Warren," she said, suddenly very serious and anxious.

It hadn't occurred to me that my dad's brothers and sisters might have felt guilty about abandoning me too. Hell, to stop being a self-centered bastard for a second, how had the felt about their brother betraying their family and everything they stood for. How would _I_ have felt if Will Stronghold had suddenly turned psycho?

"Baron owes you more than you owe me," I said, starting to feel ashamed.

"Thank you Warren," Bernadette smiled sadly. "But a father still owes quite a lot to his wife and son. And he wouldn't give anything to you, or her, or us. No answers, no explanations, nothing. Maybe between us we can figure something out."

"I-. Thanks," I said simply. Bernadette looked at me thoughtfully.

"I know we only met yesterday Warren, but I think you're far better than Baron ever was. Don't let anyone tell you differently."

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, but Bernadette didn't seem to expect me to, and left me to my own devices for a while.

After I finally got myself some food, Bernadette gave me the promised tour of the house so I wouldn't keep being so confused all the time. I was memorizing everything I could with the same single-minded concentration I would have used to study a supervillain's lair. I revised my opinion of the house a few times as we took the tour. You could have held six high school reunions simultaneously in the grand ballroom, and the library… well the Maxville public library was smaller by a large margin, and it wasn't exactly an undersized facility.

In addition to a full cellar and underground crypt (which I took Bernadette's word for, not particularly wanting to go down there), there were outbuildings for both a training gym and a large garage for all the vehicles. The gym was easily as nice as anything at Sky High, and even had a large amount of the technology like Boomer used in the Gauntlet.

The tour lasted easily until lunch, which I was relived to discover was a much less formal affair than dinner. When Bernadette mentioned to her brothers the reason she had been giving me a tour, I got a lot of commiseration, much to my astonishment. Despite the interest they had shown in me last night, I hadn't been expecting a whole lot of sympathy from them.

"I used to get lost all the time," Reginald was saying. "We all did. We used to blindfold each other when we were little and take whoever we had to some random part of the estate and make them find their way back to their room."

"Bah, what are you talking about? You got lost last week coming up from the basement!" Tobias quipped to his eldest, to roars of laughter from everyone else.

"Phone, Father," Reginald said, as the laughter died down. Smiles vanished around the table as Reginald pulled out a red emergency phone; nearly identical to one I had received from Principal Powers. His face became set in a hard expression as he listened.

"Yes, yes of course. We'll be there in ten minutes," he said after a moment, and clicked the phone shut. "Cold Cobalt and the Brotherhood of Frost seized the bank, chased out everyone, and are trying to break into the vault."

Well, Reginald had actually said the name of the bank, but to me it sounded like a sneeze. I'd have to ask for the translation sometime later. Bernadette said something in German I guessed wasn't a compliment by the way Tobias glared at her, and the rest of my uncles shoved away from the table.

"They'll need all of us, and Lauren, you too," Reginald said quickly, and looked sympathetically at his sister. Bernadette looked a little sullen, but nodded.

"Cryos versus cryos doesn't work," I muttered under my breath, quoting from class. Even if the sounds of the names weren't a dead getaway, I knew about the Brotherhood of Frost. I wasn't the walking encyclopedia of superhero knowledge that Ethan was, but I had memorized those villains I would most likely be requested to face. The cold-themed Brotherhood of Frost had been some of them, and Cold Cobalt I remembered from searching through her records a few months ago. Bernadette, overhearing me, nodded shortly in agreement.

"We tried that twice, it was disaster both times. So I'm barred from going after them, along with Emily and Ivana. They're going to need the rest of the men though, and Lauren. Cobalt and the Brotherhood might be a bit cowardly, but they hate us with an unholy passion," she said shortly. Emily was her daughter, and Ivana's was Reginald's, both cryokinetics, I remembered. The other two Battle cousins didn't even have powers.

I was torn for a second, not sure if I should say anything. There were five active pyrokinetic superheroes that would be going, as well as an electrokinetic. Would they need my help? Would they _want_ my help? This technically wasn't my call, but it wasn't like I was supposed to _need_ a call to help people. And if I was going to go out on my first real mission, I could do worse than to go out with other experienced heroes. Especially _these_ heroes; I felt I _had_ to see how they worked together...

"Can I help?" I asked quickly to Reginald.


	25. Battle's Battle

"Can I help?" I asked quickly to Reginald. The others Battles stopped what they were doing to stare at me briefly. Reginald looked a little startled, but nodded quickly.

"Of course Warren," he said briskly, and I shoved away from the table to go change, blessing all the tedious hours we spent practicing quick changes in school. I was armored up in only a few seconds, and felt marginally superior as I waited for the rest of my uncles to finish getting ready. Reginald was ready first, in his guise as Fire King. All of my uncles' costumes looked like elaborate medieval court robes, with crown-topped headdresses and simple domino masks, all in shades of scarlet, vermilion, ocher, and gold. Lauren, as Tesla, was similar, but in silver instead of red. Fire King gave me a quick up and down glance as we waited.

"Hmm… that's a bit flamboyant, don't you think?" he commented idly. I looked pointedly at his own costume.

"You're one to talk," I said, nodding at the glittering gold crown. He actually unbent enough to laugh, startling the hell out of me.

"All right, all right, we're all flamboyant. Adds to the mystique, don't you think?" he asked rhetorically as everyone else trooped in in a swirl of red and gold.

"You're late," he commented, and Fire Prince snapped something back in German that made the rest of the group stifle laughter. Fire King looked mildly pained, but ignored the comment otherwise. The banter reminded me of the gang, which was actually blowing my mind a little. Though I had guessed my dad's family might be polite, even politely interested, I hadn't expected them to be... playful. Not with what I'd seen of Tobias.

"Phoenix, I want you guarding Tesla. You're the only one of us who has actually had any bodyguard training," he said as he began striding out towards the hangar. "The Brotherhood really hates her, but we need her to take down Heat Sink. You watch her back so the rest of us can contain Cold Cobalt."

I nodded shortly, shoving aside the impulse to ask to go after Cold Cobalt with the rest of them. Emotionally I wanted to be in the thick of the fight, but intellectually I knew we had plenty of firepower, pun intended, amongst the other five pyrokinetics. They needed me to guard my aunt, and this was their turf. This was my first time out in an official capacity, and it wasn't time to start arguing tactics with people who had not only been in the game for decades more than I had, but who had faced these villains before and won. I had done pretty well guarding people before, and despite any ambiguity I felt for these people as my relatives, I refused to let a fellow superhero down.

The Brotherhood of Frost was a group of cold-themed supervillains that were motivated by money and power. They were thieves, rather than megalomaniacs or mad scientists, which meant that if you resisted strongly enough, they were more likely to run than pull some kind of doomsday stunt or scorched-earth tactic. It made them one of the easier kinds of villains to face. It didn't mean that they weren't ruthless or violent, because they were, but they were also more interested in self-preservation than getting things done.

I was _very_ thankful I had gone up against Cryo Club several times in the last few months, so the tricks I would need were right at the forefront of my mind. Pyros versus cryos was always an interesting kind of fight. If either dominated, it could spell doom for the loser. Get my body temperature down to "normal" range, and I'd probably die. Bring a cryokinetic's up to "normal," same result. But the advantage usually remained with the pyro, if for no other reason than most people lived in places where the temperature was normally above freezing. Only in winter or in polar regions could a cryokinetic dominate a pyrokinetic in a fight.

The Brotherhood was going to have their hands full, but that was no reason to get cocky. Cold Cobalt wasn't technically a member of Brotherhood, because she lacked the critical qualification of being able to lower the temperature, or create or manipulate ice or snow. Her power was to manipulate cold metal. She could draw it to her and make it do whatever she wanted, but only if it was below freezing. I had no idea where she had gotten her powers, but they were certainly up there on the scale of strangeness. And possible danger. Though our heat could neutralize her cold metal, all she would have to do would be very fast, and we could find ourselves impaled. Not, this was not the time for overconfidence.

The Brotherhood itself actually numbered in the dozens of official members, so I pressed Fire King for specifics as we got to the hangar. It couldn't be all of them, or I doubted only the six of us would have been going.

"From what we know, it's Heat Sink, Coldwind, Snowfall, Snowman, Iceknife, and Icestar," he said, waving us into what looked like a dark red limousine. I should have known better as Fire Knight took the controls and powered up the car. It was a rocket, just like the Sky High school buses, and soon we were hurtling through the air on our way to Berlin.

"Heat Sink is going to have to be practically joined at Cold Cobalt's hip for her to use her powers, and Coldwind and Snowfall rarely leave each other's side. So it'll be Iceknife, Icestar, and Snowman we'll have to deal with directly," Fire King continued. I tried to smother a chuckle at the mention of Snowman, and the Burning Duke gave me a sardonic smile.

"I know animating snow is a ridiculous power, but just wait until he starts swarming with two dozen snowmen. A normal person can smother under all that. We'd just end up drowning in cold water," he pointed out, and I sobered up immediately. That was possibly the worse fate I could imagine, barring being suffocated.

Heat Sink's power was, obviously, to drain heat from the environment around him. He could even absorb fire, up to a limited point. Obviously Cold Cobalt wanted him near so he could keep the metal around her cold. But if we could hit him with enough fire, eventually he would have to reach his limit, and Cold Cobalt would be out of business. Or Tesla could take him out in one hit, because absorbing lightning was _not_ on his list of talents. That's why she was coming. If she hadn't been there, any one of Fire Court could have been in serious danger of becoming hypothermic if they got anywhere near him.

Coldwind had power over winds, and Snowfall could make it snow anywhere, though both of them were closer to Sidekicks than supervillains in their own right. Neither of them was particularly powerful, but together they could make a pretty close approximation of a blizzard. That meant visibility could be crap for all of us, because it was damn hard to hit what you couldn't see. Their friend Iceknife could make and throw knives of ice, while Icestar, the last of the bunch, was a true cryokinetic. All together, the Brotherhood of Frost could be a nasty bunch of foes.

"Icestar is probably going to have a stroke when he sees all of you," Tesla quipped with an evil smile when the explanations were done. "With what you did to him last time, Fire Lord, he's going to be scared out of his mind."

"I set his cape on fire," he explained at my perplexed glance. "He was wearing this fur-trimmed monstrosity in the worse possible taste, and of the most flammable materials possible. He had it coming to him."

"I would have been disappointed if _someone_ hadn't crisped that thing. I swear, that ugly rag was a weapon in and of itself," Fire Knight called from up front. "Get ready, we're down in one minute."

I took a few seconds to calm myself, closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Even the light banter didn't really help settle my nerves, because that was exactly what my friends and I would do before Coach Boomer put us through some fiendishly difficult permutation of the Gauntlet. Tesla put her silver-gloved hand over mine, seeming to sense my nervousness.

"It's going to be all right, Phoenix. You can do this," she said softly. I looked over and her and smiled a bit, then took a final deep breath, trying to leave all my fear behind me. _I've trained for this my whole life, and I refuse to screw this up now_ , I told myself firmly.

There was a very faint bump as we landed, and I privately was grateful that Fire Knight was better at driving than Ron Wilson. Picking myself off the floor wouldn't have been a very auspicious entrance to my first battle. The doors swung open and the members of the Fire Court strode out. Police ringed the bank at a respectful distance, and much, _much_ farther away, a crowd had gathered behind barriers. I could see frost riming the heavy bank doors, and the cold was palpable even from where I was standing.

The Fire Court should have looked strange and out of place amongst the modern buildings. They looked like nothing so much as a medieval tapestry brought to life, in their robes and crowns and all. But it was more like the opposite, like the real world was the fake one, and they were the ones that truly belonged. I wasn't sure how they managed that, but it was a very cool effect.

There was actually cheering from the citizens down the block when we stepped out, and Fire King gave them a royal wave with a graceful nonchalance. The police looked extremely relieved to see us, and someone who I guessed was the captain stepped forward to talk briefly with Fire King. They nodded shortly, and the police pulled back.

"The Brotherhood is after information in the vault, not to mention money. If they manage to get in, we're free to use any and all means to get them out again. They are not to have access to the vault for any length of time," he said, and there were savage grins all around. Fire King turned and led us up the stairs, flames beginning to flicker along his hands.

"We're going in the front door?" I asked dubiously, but in a low voice. I was expecting a lot more scouting and strategizing, honestly, and fear started to knot my gut despite my earlier self pep-talk. Fire Court having confidence in their abilities was one thing, but this casual approach was perilously close to hubris.

"The back door can only admit us one at a time, and I'd hate to create a bottleneck. And I'm too old to go swinging through the skylight," Fire King murmured back.

"Then let's get started, Grampa," Fire Prince quipped, in what sounded like a long-running joke, judging from the faint laughter from the others.

"Coldwind and Snowfall will probably try to distract us the moment we get inside. Just follow our lead Phoenix," Fire King added, then nodded to Fire Prince. Both powered up and, without further ado, grabbed the doors, flinging them dramatically open to crash into the walls with a hollow boom.

The huge marble lobby was ankle deep in snow falling from the ceiling, frost rimming the lights above and crawling along the walls. The Fire Court powered up simultaneously and crossed their wrists in front of them, me just a half-second behind, as a cold, snow-laden wind lashed forward to try to blind us. With the heat we were all putting out, we were just pelted with a fine, warm mist, and we heard a curse from somewhere in front of us. _First trick, didn't work_ , I thought, confidence trickling back in.

Behind the teller's counter were two women, one with wind-whipped hair and the other dusted with snow, both dressed in variations on shimmering blue, obviously Coldwind and Snowfall. A taller guy dressed entirely in white proved to be Snowman, as a half-dozen humanoid snow figures pulled themselves free from the drifts and began to run towards us. Nearly simultaneously there was a rumbling, then a screech of metal as pipes and wiring ripped from the wall. From behind the counter, a woman in a metallic blue super-suit directed them to come stabbing after us, while a small guy in blue and red next to her made a cupping motion in his hands.

Just in front of them stepped two more, a guy in a spiky silver and white ensemble, Iceknife, and another with a silver star on the chest of his blue super-suit. Icestar's eyes went wide when he saw who it was, but powered up anyway at a scream from Cold Cobalt. The two began to hurl ice shards and ice spheres as Cold Cobalt's metal lashes closed in on us.

The Fire Court swung into action, Fire King and Fire Prince focusing on the metal coming out of the walls, heating it until Cold Cobalt could no longer control it. The Burning Duke, Fire Lord, and Fire Knight were meeting the icy projectiles with their own fireballs, keeping them away from the rest of us. The snowmen were ignoring the rest of the Fire Court entirely, heading straight for Tesla and I. I smiled wickedly and began target practice, each fireball turning a snowman into an explosion of slush and water.

Snowman was frantically trying to animate as many as he could, but the temperature in here was rising, and his snow was melting. Snowfall and Coldwind kept trying to keep up a distracting blizzard, but with six powerful pyrokinetics in the same room, the snow was turning into rain. Soon we were in more danger from slipping on slush than from any icy powers, and the Brotherhood of Frost was looking worried.

Then Tesla finally got a clear shot at Heat Sink as the air cleared of snow, and electrical lances flew from her fingers to strike the man square in the chest. He was blown clear off his feet, and Cold Cobalt started to panic as the metal began to cease obeying her commands.

"Retreat! Into the vault!" Cold Cobalt yelled suddenly, and the Brotherhood turned and ran. We gave chase, but with the water and slippery slush underfoot the best we could manage was a brisk, soggy shuffle or risk measuring our length in cold water a dozen times from slips. It was nearly impossible to tumble through the muck, and with every countertop slick and wet, we had no choice but just to shove our way through the ankle-deep muck. There was a heavy _thud_ before we could get to the door, and before we could catch up to them, they had managed to lock themselves in the vault.

"Now what?" I asked, trying to think of anything we had that could get through a bank vault door quickly. If we'd had Ethan with us, he could have possibly melted under it, or hell, Will could probably have crumpled it up like cardboard. Was there anything back in the jet? Explosives?

"There's too much important information in there to let them have the run of it for any length of time. We're melting the door. Tesla, get ready to blast on my command!" Fire King said, and placed one hand on the door. _What the hell...?_ I thought.

"Phoenix, help us," Fire Knight said, as the rest of the Fire Court joined hands to Fire King.

"What?" I asked intelligently; I had no idea what they were up to.

"The family motto, it's literal as well as figurative. Our powers combined…" he trailed off as I realized what he was getting at, and I grabbed his hand. _Looks like I'm not the only one whose powers can be fed…_

We powered up at Fire King's nod, and I could feel the heat draining from me into the chain of hands, ending at the door. It wasn't quite like healing; it wasn't nearly so tiring, I realized with relief. I watched in fascination as the flames at Fire King's hand went from orange, to yellow, to yellow-white, and finally to the blue-white of an acetylene torch.

I could feel my mouth starting to drop as the temperature rose and the door began to glow a dull red. When I powered up, I could get up to five hundred degrees on average, sometimes a little over six hundred if I was really pressed; almost enough to melt lead. But with all of us working together, Fire King was actually melting steel, getting his flames up over _three thousand_ degrees.

The heat and light were a little hard to bear, even for me, and I wasn't sure how long my uncles could stand it, being closer than me. Fire King was actually sweating, and I knew that was something that a pyrokinetic just didn't do normally. It was several long minutes before Fire King's voice finally broke the silence.

"Tesla, now!" he called. I turned to see her raise her hands and lash at the soft, half-melted spot on the vault doors with two javelins of lightning. Softened metal exploded, and now there was a ragged hole in the vault door. Cold Cobalt and the Brotherhood of Frost were looking at us with utter astonishment, and Fire King gave them a sardonic smile.

"So good to find you at home, Brothers. Come along quietly now," he quipped. The Brotherhood wasn't interested though, and rushed past us in a desperate bid for freedom, slamming freezing bodies through the exhausted Fire Court, bowling us over into the freezing slush in their rush to escape. I abruptly discovered that while channeling heat wasn't as draining as healing, it was still pretty tiring. I and everyone else were pretty slow on the draw, and it took us a few seconds to start throwing fireballs again. Tesla began chasing them with lightning immediately though as they froze the water underneath their feet and literally skated out the back door.

"Cowards! Babies! Unsophisticated swine! Rank amateurs!" she shouted after them as she chased them out with miniature lightning bolts at their heels. A roar from a jet was heard a moment later, and I knew they had escaped even before an annoyed Tesla walked back in.

"They're learning since we captured Frostfire," she commented, and the others made exasperated noises.

"The important thing is we chased them off before the managed to get into anything important. Come on, let's go home," Fire King said firmly. A quick check of the vault showed very minimal damage inside and luckily no nasty traps waiting for some unsuspecting citizen. With a firm nod from Fire King, we began to walk back out through the water and slush, now rapidly melting and running out the doors. I looked over my shoulder at the back door, and set my jaw at the frost-etched handprints from the Brotherhood's escape.

Villains escaped all the time, it was nearly inevitable, and it was something they had prepared us for at Sky High. You generally only caught villains when they were either extremely desperate (like Royal Pain) or extremely crazy (like my dad). Villains were generally cowards at heart, and unwilling to sacrifice their life or freedom for their cause. Hence, most of them were escape artists. You couldn't let it get to you or you'd go crazy, so I just tried to shrug it off.

We stepped outside to the sound of a cheering crowd, and I felt myself beginning to smile, minor disappointments of escaping villains being washed away in their roars of approval. I don't know how long I had wanted to hear that sound, but right now I was nearly basking in it. It felt great, better than I had even imagined. Citizens, police, and reporters gathered around us as we emerged, shouting questions and comments, smiling broadly. Fire King held up his hands for silence, and amazingly, got it.

"The Brotherhood has been defeated and has fled. They will trouble you no more this day!" he said grandly, and more cheering rippled through the crowd. Almost simultaneously with our little press conference was the sudden influx of a cleaning crew and bank officials behind us to get the place up and running again.

It was kind of funny when you thought about it, at how casually relatively small battles like this were taken. When someone asked you why you were late when you were just going to the bank to make a deposit, you could easily say, "Traffic was terrible," or "The lines were long," or "The Brotherhood of Frost was trying to rob the place," and all could be considered legitimate excuses. Places like this (and a great deal of private citizens) carried "superbattle insurance" to cover the expenses from things like ripped-out plumbing and melted vault doors. Otherwise superheroes would have been in a lot of trouble every time they used someone's car as a projectile or shield.

It was a heady experience to be up in front of a crowd of people that were cheering for me, who wanted me, who liked what I had done. For some inane reason, I found myself thinking, _"How could my dad have ever given this up to want to rule people through fear?"_ Nothing could compare with this…

I heard photographers calling out everyone's name, trying to get good pictures of each person, though there were a few moments of hesitation as they caught a good look at me. I was new; no one knew my name or who I was. Fire King figured it out at once and gestured for me to come to the front.

"This is Our young friend Phoenix. He is visiting from America and was kind enough to aid Us when the call for help came in," he explained simply, giving nothing away I wouldn't have wanted, and I gave him a nearly imperceptible nod of gratitude. He was being particularly discrete... but then again with how my dad was viewed, he probably didn't want Baron Battle brought up any more than I did.

None of the crowd had heard of me before, obviously, and the reporters gathered around with questions. I was just glad that tireless work by the Bureau over the years had finally gotten it through the media's heads that there were some questions we just would not answer, no matter how many times we were asked. However, there were a few perfectly legitimate ones I was dreading, but I knew I was going to have to answer sometime.

"What are your powers?" someone yelled.

"Pyrokinesis, same as them," I said with a nod at the Fire Court, powering up briefly. A few more flashbulbs flashed, and I kept myself from smirking when I thought about some of the classes we'd had in Heroic Poses and Posturing. I'd gotten very good grades in that class...

"Are you part of the Fire Court?" another person called.

"Are you related to anyone in the Fire Court?" someone else asked simultaneously. That was the question I had been dreading the most, but I took a deep breath and answered anyway. _Let's see how this plays in Berlin…_

"I'm the son of the Peacemaker and the Red Knight," I said clearly. I waited for people's faces to fall. My choice of words was very deliberate. My father was known only by his real name in the superhero community for two reasons: one, had identified himself as such when he went on his villainous rampage, and two, he had been formally stripped of his superhero name at his sentencing.

It was meant to keep from having to say they had a "former superhero" in jail, and supposedly to keep what good he had done under that name free of the taint he had smeared on it by association. In checking my father's records, I had been surprised at the amount of good he had done as the Red Knight before going crazy. Of course, not many citizens remembered the Red Knight now, but since he had been part of the Fire Court, anyone that _did_ remember it was going to realize exactly what was going on.

I watched for people's reactions, and saw surprise cross several faces, but I was honestly surprised to see no frowns, no second looks, and no expression of bitter hatred. _I guess people don't hate me as much as I think they do. Or it just might be that it's been nearly two decades since this happened,_ I thought idly. People in the superhero community had taken my dad's defection to the dark side a lot harder than most citizens had, apparently.

"Our young nephew is welcome to work with the Fire Court whenever he likes, but he will be working primarily in America," Fire King spoke up quickly to answer the first person's question, which was good, because I hadn't been sure what to say. All of my potential responses to that revelation had been for damage control! More questions were called out, mostly about specifics from the fight, and Fire King answered them all himself, allowing me to step back into the Fire Court again, slightly bemused about the crowd's response. Tesla put her hand on my elbow to get my attention.

"Neatly done Phoenix," she murmured. "I think Fire King is winding down, start walking towards the car."

We casually strolled through the crowd, which parted like magic, and I sank down gratefully into the seat inside. A few minutes later everyone had cleared out enough for a take-off, and we were flying back to the Battle estate. Despite the curveball of being asked my parentage right there at the end, I was still having a hard time not smiling.

All that training, all the Gauntlet runs, strengthening, target practice, agility training, all of it had paid off. My first real fight out of Sky High and it just hadn't been easy… it had been, well… fun! I know hero work was supposed to be rewarding, but was it supposed to make you want to giggle hysterically? I wasn't having a power reaction, at least I didn't think I was, but I still couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Even my parentage had been a total non-issue; it was like a weight I had been carrying around for a long time had just been lifted off my shoulders for good.

"What in the world is going through your mind, Phoenix?" Tesla asked, taking off her headdress and mask.

"Is… Is it bad that that was kind of… fun?" I asked finally. Lauren turned to her brothers with a look of triumph, holding out her hand, palm up.

"Pay up, he said it," she said, and groans came from the rest of my uncles as they fished their wallets out of their costumes and slapped euros of various denominations into her hand.

"We had a bet," Andrew explained, removing his Fire Prince headdress. "That you would be too serious to have any fun. And I'm out fifty euros!"

"I don't take a bet that I'm not sure I'll win, you should know that by now!" Lauren said with an impudent grin, folding her money and tucking it into her robes.

"That's why I only bet five. Blasting apart snowmen is just about the most fun you can have with pyrokinesis," David said with a smile, rolling up his Burning Duke mask. "Though I do admit matching Iceknife blow for blow is nearly as fun, if more demanding."

"If you can't have some kind of fun while being a hero, you're going to burn out fairly quickly, pun intended, as always," Reginald pointed out, holding his headdress to brush rock dust from the top of it.

I was also totally getting a kick out of the casual jokes and banter flying between them. It had the ease of long intimacy, and bespoke of the long years of working together. It was welcoming, strongly welcoming, though there would always be the barrier of age between us, it became not entirely impossible to think of them as a little more than just fellow superheroes. It was possible to think of them as being related to me. And that actually scared me a little. My dad had apparently grown up with these same people, but had still managed to go off the deep end. I quickly shoved the thought to the back of my mind and started talking, pressing questions about some more immediate concerns.

"Are they going to be back? The Brotherhood I mean?" I asked. How could they even think of coming back when they had seen what Fire Court had done? If I had been them, I would have flipped burgers or sold ice cream for a living before putting myself in a situation where I had to face people that could melt vault doors. Could the paltry amount of money or information they might have gotten away with been worth that kind of danger? Despite learning about some of that in class, I still didn't understand the supervillain mindset very well. I probably never would.

"They'll probably be back eventually. The Brotherhood's persistent, but easily scared off. And Houdinis when it comes to wriggling out of a bad situation. Don't worry, our employer can't complain about how we handled the situation," Christopher said casually, loosening the throat of his Fire Lord robes.

"Who _does_ employ you?" I asked. I hadn't ever asked Tobias that before and I was a little curious. And asking about trivia like that would keep me distracted from the uncomfortable revelations of realizing my relatives actually were my relatives.

 _Isn't that why you're here in the first place?_ my brain snarked. _Shut up,_ I thought firmly.

"It depends. We're contracted for half a dozen large cities by various mayors, several states in their entirety in various countries. No countries in their entirety though, other than Liechtenstein, because having individual divisions for _that_ country would be pointless," Reginald said. I snickered a little at that.

"We generally don't ever take a contract for a country as a whole to avoid questions of 'patriotism' and 'loyalty.' You can imagine what a mess that would create, politically," Anthony called back from the front.

"Yeah… that could be bad," I said. It made a lot of sense though; I couldn't imagine the kind of havoc that could happen if a country tried to force a superhero to basically be a kind of superior soldier. Asking superheroes to use their powers against citizens could quickly turn into a witchhunt for superpowered being that would surpass the bloodiness of the Inquisition.

"You have a talent for understatement, Phoenix," Reginald said pointedly, and nodded at my helmet after a minute.

"Oh, right," I said, and finally took it off. "Sorry, I forgot." Unspoken protocol in the superhero worlds stated that if someone was in costume or at least in their mask, you called them by their superhero name. Take the name off, and you revert to your citizen identity. Mr. Stronghold was sometimes really bad at that.

"You forgot you had it on? Reggie, find out whatever that's made out of and copy it for our headdresses, will you? I swear the weight multiplies every minute I have it on!" Andrew yelled from the cockpit, which set me and everyone else laughing.

I didn't remember laughing this much unless I was with the company of my friends, but felt so buoyed by our success that I couldn't help it. Like my friends, they had accepted my powers without question, and there had been no hesitation on their part in accepting my help or being confident I had done my job. I hadn't had that from anyone but my mom and the gang before, and I could feel a few bricks in the old wall of resentment against my dad's family crumbling. And honestly I didn't mind at all, even with the slight attendant uneasiness that the change brought.

We landed back at the Battle estate without incident, and the rest of the family was waiting for us when we got back to the dining room, faces wreathed in smiles.

"Excellent job everyone, well done!" Tobias said warmly, clasping Reginald's hand. Apparently they had all been watching us, as there was a huge viewing screen above the fireplace that was showing the tail end of our press conference. Bernadette turned and punched a button on the remote in her hand, making the viewing screen retract into the stonework, leaving the place looking like a proper ancient castle again.

"And Warren, I was watching the footage, very well done indeed," he said with a nod in my direction. I actually smiled back, which completely startled him.

"Yeah, that was pretty fun," I said casually, and Lauren extended her hand to the rest of her family members.

"What, did _everyone_ vote against me?" I asked, as Lauren collected from everyone in the room.

"Apparently," Tobias said with some irritation, putting his wallet away, many euros lighter.

"Grampy, Great-Grampy, Great-Uncles, Uncle Warren, lookie lookie look!" a young voice shouted from the far side of the room. Little Thomas skidded into the room, went down in a tangle of limbs, slid into the table, and knocked over two chairs, all with his hands on fire. _And to think in any other household that would be cause for alarm…_ I thought idly as Reginald casually reached under the table to pull the youngest pyrokinetic in the Battle house out.

"Well then, powered up for the first time? Wonderful! Now, put yourself out before you set someone's clothes on fire. Or your own," Reginald said with a mixture of pride and sternness. Thomas looked around at the rest of us, who were very carefully trying not to laugh. I schooled my face into an impressive scowl, honed by years of practice, and Thomas gulped and abruptly extinguished himself.

" _There_ he is," Ivana said a moment later, strolling into the room, arm in arm with her husband. "He was watching the battle with the Brotherhood and was trying to imitate all of you on the screen. And he finally succeeded."

"He melted the TV, didn't he?" Reginald asked with a sigh, and Ivana nodded. I choked down more laughter, so ebullient at this point that my friends probably wouldn't have recognized me.

"Oh, I think it's a right of passage that you destroy _something_ when you power up. I burned my clothes nearly clean off," Andrew pointed off. "David actually burned the stove, Lauren fried the wiring in half the castle, Father told me he burned the bed-."

"Let's not get into details, shall we?" Tobias said quickly, and I smothered another round of laughter.

"What about you Warren?" Christopher asked.

"Side of my house," I confessed, for once not feeling the wrench of anger that usually cost me.

"See, happens to all of us Thomas," Andrew said. "Now, you have to make sure it only happens _once_. You know the rules." Thomas suddenly went to attention, clicking his heels together, clasping his hands behind his back, and standing very straight.

"We have our powers so we can help others, and we cannot help others if we cannot control what we do. Fire uncontrolled is dangerous and destroys everything in its path. Fire controlled is the greatest tool of man," he recited carefully, as Ivana and her husband (I could not for the life of me remember his name) beamed at him. Apparently all was well with the Battle family.

* * *

That night I didn't mind dressing for dinner very much, as I found that my tuxedo had been cleaned and pressed again since last night, and Chester had finally gotten the hint that I didn't want help. I didn't have to struggle so much with the silverware, thanks to Ivana's helpful comments, and with the euphoria over having a new pyrokinetic in the family, my own gaffs were much less noticeable. To my astonishment, Reginald even offered a toast in my honor, for my success in my first mission.

I raised my glass with the others, pleasure in my own success overcoming any reluctance I might have had at the pomp and ceremony of the occasion. All of the Battles were smiling at me, offering their own good wishes on top of the toast, and for a moment I actually felt very much one of them. And I hadn't really felt that since Will and the gang had taken me in.

My last thought before I went to bed was to wonder with all the general goodwill and acceptance floating around, how had my dad turned out the way he had?

* * *

I ended up crashing pretty hard though at night, sleeping the sleep of the dead until I was awoken at some ungodly hour of the morning by Chester.

"Master Peace, you have a video call," he said politely as I struggled to get fully conscious.

"Who is it at this hour of the morning?" I groused, hoping to hell this wasn't some kind of revenge for my first night here.

"I am not certain, but the number is American," he said politely.

"Must be my mom," I said groggily, though why she felt the need to call this early was beyond me. Chester handed me a remote and pointed to the viewing screen above the fireplace. He left politely as I finally got myself sitting up in bed and hit the connect button. Immediately the screen was filled with beaming visages of my friends, who started cheering the second they saw me.

"Yeah Warren! Awesome!" Zack yelled, clapping and yelling the loudest of everyone.

"Can't we leave you alone even for a few _days?"_ Will asked.

"Guys, it's like three in the morning over here," I pointed out. "What's going on?"

"Dude, you're all over the news!" Zack exclaimed, and Ethan pushed in a bit, fiddled with some buttons, and the screen divided in half, showing some of the American news footage of the press conference on the steps of the Berlin bank.

"You graduate and _three days later_ you're already kicking butt and taking names? That's some kind of record!" Will said, grinning his head off.

"Totally! That's _excellent!_ " Ethan enthused.

"We're so proud of you Warren!" Layla chimed in.

"Yeah, that looked great. And where the hell are you staying? The royal palace?" Magenta demanded, her eyes darting around my bedroom.

"The Battle estate. It's like living in a museum," I confessed.

"Oh, and nice abs, Warren," Magenta added. I hadn't bothered to put on a shirt to sleep, and I was sitting up in bed with the covers around my waist. Magenta was expecting me to blush and pull up the sheet, but today, even with being woken up early, I was feeling far too good to be ribbed on how I looked. I was a genuine, certified superhero as of yesterday, and my confidence was at an all time high.

Besides Magenta and the rest of them deserved a little bit of discomfort for not being able to understand time zones. _What the hell, why not?_ I stretched very deliberately, even flexing a little, and Magenta flushed.

"They are, aren't they? And you should know," I said mischievously, and actually winked at her. She went completely crimson, and the rest of the gang nearly passed out laughing. I was glad Zack had such a good sense of humor, though, or I would have feared for my safety once I got back.

"What's gotten into _you?"_ Layla demanded, and I just laughed.

"I had a good day," I said simply.

"Uh oh… I know what this is. This is happy skippy Warren!" Will said with mock horror. I just rolled my eyes.

"Anyway, it's _still_ three in the morning over here," I pointed out.

"I thought you said you had the time zones figured out," Will whispered frantically to Ethan. Ethan just shrugged.

"Sorry, I was doing… something…" he trailed off.

"Talking to Chloe, you mean," Magenta said.

"At Anthony's Italian with Chloe," he corrected, with whoops and congratulations from the rest of the gang. I just shook my head.

"Still three in the morning!" I pointed out forcefully. I was tickled that they had called me to congratulate me, but I was still tired and jet-lagged.

"Anything else going on over there? I mean, are you going to keep working with the Fire Court?" Ethan asked more seriously.

"As long as I'm here. I haven't forgotten you guys already, ok? I'll be back," I told them. I could guess what Ethan was thinking. The press conference from yesterday showed me being accepted by both the public and my relatives, and it was also very obvious that my father's family was _not_ hurting for money. In a place like this, with people that shared my powers, where they understood them, where I wouldn't have to deal with people that saw me as a born villain, where we would all stand together… I suppose the lure might have looked irresistible from his angle. And I certainly wasn't totally immune to it. I'd crossed my mind more than once yesterday.

 _This is what Tobias wanted_ , I realized. I should have been angry with him, but I knew the rest of the family had been genuinely happy to see me and to work with me. He had said he wanted me back in his life again, and trying to lure me to stay here with the feelings of belonging was understandable. It wasn't going to happen though. It might have been passive manipulation, but it was manipulation all the same, and I could see what he was trying to do.

Besides, someone had to keep Stronghold's head on straight when he wouldn't listen to Layla. Someone had to help Ethan with his newest theories, and keep Zack out of trouble. My Battle relatives were good people, and I realized that I really did like them. But I couldn't stay here. I hadn't grown up here, and while they welcomed me, I wasn't really part of their world. As nice as the surroundings were too, I'd probably end up wanting to throttle Tobias within a week if I tried to live by his rules. That probably wouldn't do anybody any good.

 _Would it be so bad to follow a few rules to have total acceptance from your blood relatives? They_ want _you here badly; I'd bet you and the others could wear down Tobias if he was being too stubborn about something. And look how you'd be living! You already made up your mind about this before you came here. Now that you've really seen this place, are you that sure?_ my brain asked with quiet logic.

 _Sure enough,_ I thought, trying to ignore my slightly wavering conviction. I didn't want my friends to try to convince me one way or the other...

"Are you sure? Looks like you're livin' the high life over there," Zack said, grinning.

"Nah, someone's got to keep you guys in line. Look, thanks for calling me and everything, but I seriously need to get some sleep. And next time make sure Ethan's not on a date before you ask him to do something!" I added lightly, brushing aside my inner worries. Ethan blushed but nodded and I disconnected the call after a chorus of good-byes. I flipped off the lights and buried myself back under the covers, sleep already overtaking me.

 _My friends are all crazy. Absolutely nuts,_ I thought idly as I drifted back into sleep.


	26. Identity

I had almost been ready to dismiss my friends' call as just a particularly vivid dream, except that I had gotten another call from my mom at a more sane hour of the morning. She had been absolutely thrilled, and had already gotten several calls from friends in the Bureau, keeping her updated on all the news and rumors about me. Some of them were actually pretty funny, and she said I already had a fan club.

"A fan club?" I asked incredulously.

"Phoenix fan club. You already have a website," she said.

"I… don't even want to know…" I said faintly. Let Stronghold deal with fan clubs and groupies; the whole idea didn't appeal to me at all.

"Don't worry, I figured you would say that. I heard Magenta had to talk Zack out of posting something under your name though," she said, holding back a smile.

"I owe her big time," I said, shaking my head.

* * *

"Warren, will you come to my office for a moment?" Tobias asked casually as I finished the last of my breakfast. I shrugged and nodded, shoving away from the table and trailing after him through the twisting corridors of the estate.

The office was as opulent as the rest of the place, with a particularly huge tapestry depicting a dragon rampant with flaming claws right over the roaring fireplace. Tobias took a seat behind his massive redwood desk while I gingerly took mine in a red velvet chair on the other side. I was irresistibly reminded of Principal Powers' office, but somehow I was pretty sure Tobias thought he had the upper hand in this situation. Whatever it was.

"I had the plans brought up yesterday. I was wondering where you'd like your room to be," he opened, tapping a roll of paper on his desk and unfurling it.

"It's fine where it is, I guess," I said with a shrug.

"That's a guest room, I mean your permanent residence," he said with a wave at one wing of the estate.

"For when I come over here again?" I asked, suspicion and anger beginning to curl in my gut.

"No, no, for when you come over here to live," he corrected. Red shot across my vision for the briefest of instances. I had been right this morning, Tobias was certain I would want to stay.

"I'm not staying," I said very calmly.

"Why not? You would be a very welcome addition to the Fire Court. I've seen how well you work with my sons and daughters, even after just a very brief fight. They think well of you and are impressed by your training," he said persuasively. _I don't think this is what Mom had in mind when she told him to keep his opinions to himself…_

"I already have a group I'm going to work with. My friends at Sky High," I said tersely. Tobias waved his hand in airy dismissal, and I felt my anger mount. I kept it locked down as tight as I could though; Tobias had already proved he could push my buttons pretty easily, and I didn't want to fall for the same trick twice.

"That won't be for another two years. Certainly we could help you train as well here," he pointed out.

"I need to train with _them_ , and I can't do that if I'm here. Besides, you've never met Coach Boomer," I said.

"Perhaps I should," Tobias said a little stiffly.

" _And_ I have a cover job already lined up that I've been going to class for. I can't just pack up and leave," I continued.

"You wouldn't _need_ a cover job here. You could just concentrate on being a hero," he pointed out. "Your family is here, and we'd be very proud to have you in our house."

The penny dropped in my mind.

"Tobias, we might be related, but everyone here, all these people, they're still strangers to me, including you," I told him, and watched him sit back heavily in his chair. "My mom is my only real family, and I made my own 'family' out of my friends two years ago. I don't _know_ any of you that well. I know my teachers, Principal Powers, even the Lees better than you. I'm willing to work with you because you're fellow heroes, not because your son is my dad."

Tobias looked somewhat shocked, as if that had never occurred to him. I just kept pressing on him.

"At best you're a bunch of friendly acquaintances. You're decent people, don't get me wrong, but we've _just met._ I'm not going to give up the life I have in Maxville after two days here," I told him plainly. Tobias eyebrows had crawled halfway up his forehead during my little speech, and I gave him a few moments to collect himself.

"I… did not realize you felt that way," he said finally.

"You could have asked," I reminded him acidly. It had been an altruistic gesture he had made, but it had been in his usual rather high-handed manner.

"I take blood bonds very seriously…"

"Yeah, well I've spent all my life hating my father," I snapped.

"You seemed so happy the other day," he said softly. The anger abruptly left me, and I stared down at the floor. Yesterday had been one of the highlights of my life; being finally accepted as a hero. Even if he hadn't known that much about me, Tobias must have figured out how much that meant to me. Did he figure I would want to stay at the scene of my first triumph? Maybe.

"I was. Am," I told him, rubbing a hand along my neck to try to ease an impending headache.

"But I shouldn't have assumed anything. I apologize," Tobias said. I looked back up at him, slowly calming down.

"You knew I wouldn't stay. You had to know. Why even bother asking me?" I asked him.

"I had hopes, nothing more. Well, high hopes," he corrected himself. "And a very good reason want you safely in the family fold." He opened a drawer in his desk, withdrew something wrapped in dark cloth and slid it across the desk. I took it and unfolded it, staring at the metallic, spider-like construct the size of my palm contained within; the center of it scorched black.

"It's called a 'spyder.' A favorite of technopaths and mad scientists everywhere for keeping tabs on their enemies and allies. It was on the Bureau jet that brought you here. Anthony found it shortly after you arrived," he explained. "He's the technologically adept one of the family." I suddenly felt a sensation of cold in my stomach.

"It was active?" I asked. Tobias nodded.

"Right up until Anthony burned it, yes. Someone is keeping very close tabs on you, I'm afraid," he said. I stared at the spyder with apprehension.

"Who placed it?" I asked.

"Anthony says what's left of the wiring could have been done by any of several dozen technopaths or evil geniuses. There is another few dozen that just supply these things as well, so it could have come from them. However, we did find something stamped into the metal, a symbol," he said. I examined the thing carefully, finding a faint imprint of a V-shaped mask. It reminded me a little of Royal Pain's symbol that had been on the remains of her anti-gravity sabotage device Principal Powers had show us. But it wasn't quite the same; at least I didn't think so.

"It's not Royal Pain's, is it?'

"We're not sure. It certainly resembles hers, but it could be a variation," he said.

"The academy," I said flatly. Tobias nodded.

"That was our thought as well."

"How could they have gotten one on a Bureau jet? The security's pretty tight," I asked, handing the spyder back.

"Even the Bureau is not infallible. There are dozens of people who have contact with their planes, mechanics, maintenance personnel, crew, not to mention the passengers themselves. Each person is a place where the security can break down, as it obviously had. I would dare to say no place and no person is impregnable," he pointed out.

"I know that," I said a little sharply. I wasn't a child to need these things explained to me. Really. _Oh, at eighteen you already know everything there is to know, is that it?_ my brain asked me.

"Indeed. Well, this was the reason I wanted you to stay. No place is impregnable, but the Battle estate comes fairly close. Not to mention I dare say your potential attackers would be far more reluctant to take you from our midst. Our reputation for family loyalty makes us a poor choice of enemies," he pointed out.

"I have Will Stronghold on my side. He could literally punch Sky High in half and throw both halves a few dozen miles in either direction. People screw with me at their peril," I said with a bit of a smirk. Tobias pressed his lips together in what I was sure was an attempt not to smile.

"But they don't know that yet. He isn't out of school, and most people don't know he exists," Tobias said logically. "And do you really want to rely on someone else to protect you?"

"Ok, who was just talking about family loyalty? I trust Will and the rest of my friends. They'd save me or die trying. And Will's too tough to die," I said, locking gazes with Tobias. He finally nodded.

"You have me there," he conceded. "And you did say they were your family."

"I do have family loyalty, it's just not to you. Not yet."

"Someday?" Tobias asked, looking somewhat hopeful.

"Maybe someday," I agreed.

"Then that will do. I find myself getting rather impatient in my old age, and don't want to wait for things to happen naturally. I keep trying to order them instead."

"I don't do orders very well," I said, standing.

"I rather thought not," he said with an odd smile, and stood up as well. "The more I get to know you Warren, the more you remind me of your father. I don't mean that as an insult; he was a good man before he fell. He could be very stubborn for what he perceived were the right reasons, and he didn't like orders either. That's why I sent him to be an exchange student in America. He was something of a rebel, in his own way."

Considering how mentioning Baron had completely silenced Tobias' end of the table at dinner the other night, I was surprised at how casually he was willing to talk about him. I couldn't even think of any way to respond to that intelligently, so I just nodded and left. It was definitely time to go do something that _didn't_ involve thinking for once.

* * *

I found my way into the gym, locating what was basically a shooting gallery, set up for 'kinetics of every sort. A computer panel controlled the targets, and I dialed up the setting fairly high, needing to get a good workout in. Boomer would have my hide if I slacked off, and I hadn't done anything in the way of training in the last few days. Points of light began to flash at the end of the gallery, and I powered up and tried to hit them as they moved, a musical chime sounding every time I managed a hit.

I think you could actually play a tune if you got them in the right sequence, and I was experimenting with that when I felt someone staring at me. I lobbed a final fireball at the last target before powering down and shutting off the range.

"You're going to teach me today Uncle Warren?" Thomas asked the instant I turned around. He was dressed just as impeccably as the last time I had seen him, and was standing at attention, his hands clasped behind his back, at a respectful distance away.

"Yeah, sure. Don't you have school or something?" I asked. It was awfully early for him to have free time… at least in my mind.

"Yes I do, but this will be gym class. Mama told me to come over here now," he said logically, smiling.

Having a kid smile at me was a new experience.

"Fine with me. Look, do you have some workout clothes or something? You're going to burn those sleeves," I said. Thomas looked at his hands and then simply rolled up his sleeves past his elbows. I refrained from rolling my eyes, but didn't say anything. If the kid had enough control to avoid flaming past the elbows on his second day of powering up, I would be extremely impressed. If not, he'd get a very pointed reminder of what his powers could do.

I couldn't count the number of shirts I had ruined when I had first powered up before I started sticking to t-shirts. I would have ruined my jacket a lot of times too, but at that point Mom couldn't afford to get me a new coat every time I burned one. I saved nearly six months' wages from the Paper Lantern and had my jacket custom-made from a company that made firefighters' turnouts, just to avoid any more destruction to my clothing.

When Thomas was all prepared, at least by his estimation, I spent a minute or two figuring out the lowest setting on the gallery targets. That accomplished, I knelt down so I was at his level. I didn't have a whole lot of experience with teaching kids, but I had dealt with them a lot at the Paper Lantern. I didn't need to loom over the kid like a giant, and he didn't need a crick in his neck from looking up at me.

"So, what were you doing when you powered up?" I asked him.

"Practicing throwing like Grampy was at the Brotherhood," he said, demonstrating the throw in question. His hand abruptly burst into flame and a fireball impacted on the ground. Thomas jumped and looked startled, and quickly extinguished himself.

"Hang on with any more demos until we figure out what exactly you're doing…" I said, trying not to smile. I couldn't help but contrast him with me when I had first powered up. I had been angry, sad, and had felt betrayed. I had been terrified of my powers, worried that I would hurt my mom, and had been sick to my stomach that I would have to meet my dad. Thomas just thought this was the coolest thing ever, as if he had been given the latest toy for Christmas. I felt a stab of unreasoning jealousy, but tried to lock it down. Thomas had been lucky enough to be born into a family of superheroes that were used to dealing with this. I hadn't, and I had come to terms with that years ago.

 _Just keep telling yourself that Peace,_ my brain commented.

"When I power up, I usually draw my arms back, curl my fingers and clench my forearms. You… you were thinking of fire when you powered up, right?" I asked. I didn't need to, and I didn't necessarily even need to clench my hands anymore, but I had six years of experience on Thomas. Since he was a "normal" Battle pyrokinetic, I tried to dredge up everything my dad had told me about how his powers worked. He had used really specific mental images and words to trigger his powers, along with the gestures, and that had to be a lot easier for Thomas to learn than it was for me to try to control my emotions.

I don't know why Tobias had been so eager for me to teach him, because I had to really wrack my brain for my dad's exact words to me. Then again, if Tobias, Reginald or the rest of my uncles had been his disciplinarians for all of his life, Thomas might have gotten to the point where he automatically tuned them out. Zack did that spectacularly well when his dad went into lecture-mode for one reason or another. At least if Thomas thought I was interesting enough to talk to he might actually listen to me.

By the end of a half-hour I had Thomas throwing little fireballs at some of the targets, though I had to fiddle with the system to bring them twice as close as I had been using, because he couldn't throw far enough to reach the end of the gallery yet. He had also scorched the floor in an interesting pattern, and burned the sleeves completely off his shirt. He had been a little embarrassed, but had taken it in fairly good humor. A lot better humor that I ever had, that was for sure. Then again, he knew that a ruined shirt was nothing to his family; whereas I knew I ruined shirt was more money out of an already slim budget when I had been younger.

I had been about ready to call it quits when I heard someone walking behind us, and Thomas called out "Mama!" Ivana folded her son into her arms, steam actually curling up between them as her son's body heat met her own naturally cold flesh.

"You're cold!" he exclaimed, pulling back.

"No, you're hot!" she said, clucking him under the chin. "Go back to Great-Uncle Andrew, it's time for your math lesson." Thomas actually giggled and rocketed out of the gym.

"Hmm… I probably should have brought another shirt with me for him. Oh well," she commented, turning to me.

"He learns pretty quick," I offered. "He was only powering up when he wanted to, there at the end."

"Good to know. I'll keep reminding him. I hope you don't mind, I was watching you from the back for most of the lesson," she said. I shrugged; I'd almost been expecting that.

"No big deal. Probably was a good idea, I haven't taught before," I said.

"Father was watching too," she added. "He had some things to do back in the house, but he was watching for most of it. I think he was pleasantly surprised."

"What, did he think I was going to teach him something I shouldn't?" I asked.

"No, that Thomas listened to you as well as he did," she said, gesturing for me to walk with her.

"So he disrespects his elders already?" I said with a laugh.

"He's eight years old, he already know everything, didn't you realize that?" she said, smiling.

"Yeah, I hear you. Hey, you're Ice Princess, right?" I asked her, trying to make sure I remembered whom everyone was. Getting all my uncles' titles straight was bad enough, and I didn't want to miscall someone in the middle of a fight. I had a sneaking suspicion that I would be fighting alongside them more than once this vacation.

"Yes, I'm Ice Princess, and Emily is the Freezing Duchess," she confirmed, leading us back through the estate towards the kitchen.

"Why's there the break in the names? Why Freezing Duchess and Burning Duke instead of Ice Duchess and Fire Duke?" I asked. I had wondered about that.

"Oh, that," Ivana said with a long-suffering sigh. "The family _had_ used those names for years, and they were so certain that no one else was using them that they delayed when the Bureau finally had us register our superhero names back in the forties. By then someone had already taken them. So it was use the alternate names or nothing. It's rather silly, so we don't talk about it much."

"Yeah… I guess you wouldn't," I said, repressing a chuckle.

Ivana smiled in return, and abruptly changed the subject.

"Aunt Bernadette told me you wanted to talk to Uncle Anthony," she said. "Grandfather is entrenched in a meeting for the next two hours, so we thought this would be a good time."

Well, apparently the Battles were fast at putting a request into action. Ivana jerked her head to the side as she began walking towards a different part of the estate, occasionally looking over her shoulder.

"Hey, tell me something, are you all scared of Tobias?" I asked. Ivana looked like she was trying to smuggle me somewhere, and I wondered, as we wound through the twisting corridors, if she was trying to make sure we didn't run into any of the staff.

Ivana's mouth twitched in a hastily-repressed smile at my question.

"Not afraid of. Respect. Grandfather has never been terribly warm-."

I rolled my eyes.

"Demonstratably affectionate then," she corrected. "He's very… shrewd, very experienced, and he's used to being in charge of everything. He thinks he knows best because most of the time he's right."

I thought about that as we mounted more stairs and crossed galleries. What would it have been like to raise eight super-powered children and try to have them all turn out as relatively normal, mentally stable, conscientious, skilled superheroes without turning yourself either into a tyrannical drill sergeant or distance yourself completely. All in all, when I thought about my own childhood, Tobias had done a damn good job.

Which explained why my dad was such a forbidden topic unless Tobias brought him up first; who wanted to be reminded of that kind of failure. Baron Battle wasn't a taboo topic just for what _he'd_ done, but for what the Battle family had failed to do. Somehow, somewhere, all of them had failed, or at least thought they had. Mom wasn't the only one that had suffered guilt from my dad's crimes.

My whole view of the Battle family had just undergone a pretty significant change.

"I think I get it," I said softly as Ivana finally stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. She nodded sympathetically and knocked. Anthony opened the door, nodded once at Ivana, and she vanished down the hall.

"Come in," he said, shutting the door behind me. "This was Baron's room."

I'd somehow been expecting something… different. The room was just as richly furnished as everywhere else in the estate, but seemed void of personality. Well, to be fair there were a few books on military history on the shelves, but there were no pictures, no papers, nothing that told me definitively that my dad had grown up here.

"Most of his things are either with Joy or in his cell. Honestly I wanted to meet here because we won't be disturbed," Anthony explained, sitting down heavily in thickly-upholstered chair. I remained standing, arms crossed almost reflexively.

"What do you want to know, Warren?"

Faced with such a bald question, I wasn't sure where to begin. I thought I'd had answers when I talked to Will's parents, but they were only there during one day in Baron Battle's life. I stalled, trying to think, and Anthony took pity on me.

"None of us ever went to see him after he was jailed. I understand you did."

"When I first powered up. Just once, and I haven't been back since."

"Would you mind telling me about it?" he asked. In a way, he seemed as hungry for information about my dad, his _brother_ , I realized belatedly, as I was.

I closed my eyes for a second, and then told him everything I could remember. Baron's superiority, his cold-blooded assessment of me, his frightening normal and logical dissection of my powers, and his parting shot to make the Battle family proud. I tried hard to lock down my own feelings about it, but I also made sure my hands were clear of any cloth. The heat I was putting how had to be palpable even across the room.

"Amazing," Anthony said when I'd finished, shaking his head a little.

"What?" I asked. Amazement wasn't quite the reaction I'd suspected.

"It's just… he still sounds like my brother. He was always very clever in how he said things so he could get the reaction he wanted," Anthony explained.

"Manipulative-," I started, remembering my mother's haunted expression that day.

"Yes, sometimes, and a liar when he felt it was necessary. But he always did it for a good cause, or what he thought was a good cause. He was the youngest of us, and he was always trying to find some way to impress us all. It rubbed Father the wrong way," Anthony said.

"Then what happened?"

"Father sent him to America, mostly so they wouldn't end up at each other's throats. Baron met your mother, they married, moved back to Germany, and the rest…" Anthony trailed off for a moment. "Baron moved into his own house when he came back; he didn't come back here. He never worked with Fire Court on a regular basis. I remember him saying he got used to relying on himself at Sky High. And he's always been an excellent strategist, so he never seemed to need our help."

That hadn't ever occurred to me, that Baron being separate from his family during high school might have been a factor in his crimes. Or that he'd never worked with his family, ever. There was a lot of power and camaraderie working in a group, and Baron had missed all of that.

"Before Royal Pain's attack, everyone was supposed to fight alone or just with a sidekick," I explained.

"Ah. That makes sense. And he could never work alongside Joy either. I think now that he was… very lonely," Anthony said with reluctant.

"He got sick of being able to only do so much," I said, thinking out loud. It was a strange feeling, trying to get inside my dad's head.

"And then Joy got pregnant with you. If he was worried about you, about raising a child when he saw the results of evil every day…" Anthony sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "We should have guessed. We should have known, and with no disrespect to Joy, _we_ all saw Baron born, and we thought we knew him better than that.

"Maybe he thought too much, or lied to himself about what he needed to do in order to be a hero. That's my best guess, and my siblings all think the same," he said with an oddly resigned shrug.

"I think I'm getting it," I said, taking a deep breath. Everything I'd learned didn't give me definitive answers, and I had to accept that I'd never get them. If Baron Battle's own family combined with the finest psychics and psychiatrists in the Bureau couldn't figure out exactly what turned him from crafty to crazy, then it wasn't like I was going to figure it out with a few conversations. But it helped.

"It worries us, you know, and we don't talk about it nearly enough. I'm glad you came Warren," he said, standing. He made an abortive moment, like he was going to put his hand on my shoulder, but thought better of it.

"Thanks for talking to me," I said sincerely.

"Baron did one last good thing before he snapped, and that was fathering you. I'm just sorry it's taken this long to finally meet you face to face."

For the second time in two days, I was getting an idea of what it would have been like to grow up in a big family. I could tell Anthony wanted to treat me like any of his other nieces and nephews. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad, but I couldn't quite throw myself into this wholeheartedly.

Looking at Anthony Battle, I realized I barely knew anything about him, or anyone else in the family, other than what was on public record. And while being family was supposed to mean I could ask for help without having to know them, I wasn't ready to leap into this with both feet. At least Anthony seemed to understand that.

"It's ok," I said. "I think I understand a lot more now."

"Baron and Father are more alike that either of them want to admit. And I think that scares Father," Anthony said, in partial explanation, and partial apology for having to sneak around to talk about Baron.

I was about to respond to that when when my jacket pocket began ringing. I snatched out my cell phone, discovered it was silent, and then fished out my _other_ phone. There was a loud knocking at the door, and Anthony flung it open to reveal Ivana, her own emergency phone clapped to her ear. Gesturing frantically, she started to break into a run for her own room. I followed suit, leaving Anthony behind, needing to get my costume.

"Phoenix," I answered, feeling a faint thrill of anticipation.

"We have a situation in the Munich power plant! Meltdown, Hydro, and Cascade are threatening to blow it up unless their demands are met!" a faint, tinny voice sounded on the other end, trembling and full of fear, echoing as if the owner were in a warehouse.

"I'll be there," I said, and snapped it shut again.

"Munich power plant?" Ivana asked, still running alongside me, pointing down the correct hallways so I wouldn't get lost.

"Yeah!"

"Can you fly a jet?" she asked, ducking around a table.

"Only if you want to crash," I quipped back.

"I'll fly us then, I think they called the rest of Winter Court and Tesla too. Meet you at the hangar," she said, and pointed down my wing. I dashed into and out of my room in record time, slightly bemused that somehow Chester had managed to get my costume cleaned and laid out for me even though I had tried to put it away the night before.

I pounded into the hangar a bare two steps in front of Ice Queen, skidding to a halt as I spied my uncles getting into their own jet.

"Munich power plant?" I asked them, and Fire King shook his head.

"Eiffel Tower, Wind Demon and Dark Seasons are threatening to take it down unless they're paid, etcetera," he said.

"Bad day for public monuments," I said, and Fire King laughed.

"Good luck Phoenix, Ice Queen, see you back here," he said and ducked inside. Ice Princess and the Freezing Duchess skidded in a moment later, Tesla on their heels.

"Come on, power plants have a tendency to explode, and Phoenix is the only one that's fireproof," Ice Princess said, waving us into a white version of the Fire Court's jet.

"Who's Meltdown anyway? I don't recognize the name," I asked as we strapped in and lifted off.

"I don't know a lot about him myself, honestly," Ice Queen warned, and began to spin up the on-board computer to bring up specifics, frowning at the screen.

"He turns himself into lava," the Freezing Duchess corrected. "And his minions turn into water. That's about all I know."

"I know someone who knows more," I said quickly, and took out my regular cell phone, rapidly punching in a number. It must have ringed nearly ten times before a very sleepy Ethan picked up.

"Wha-?" he mumbled.

"Popsicle, wake up. It's Phoenix," I told him.

"Warren? Hey, I'm sorry about the call yesterday but-."

"Forget that. I need your help," I said, and I could nearly hear the lightbulb going on above Ethan's head.

"You're on a call?" he said excitedly.

"What do you know about Meltdown, Hydro, and Cascade?" I asked.

"They're like me, amorphous shape-shifters, though they're a _lot_ stronger when they're shifted. They're a lot more like my dad, really. Meltdown turns into lava and-," he started instantly.

"Hydro and Cascade turn into water, we figured that out. Weaknesses, tactics?" I cut in.

"Hydro and Cascade are minions, so they'll be trying to delay you. Favorite tactics are suffocation, wrapping themselves around someone's head," he said, and I could hear him flipping through books in the background. "Meltdown prefers to use the environment against his enemies, heating up metal and melting rock to bring walls and stuff down on people's heads."

I repeated this to my aunts and cousins, and Ice Queen slowly shut the computer off as I kept rattling off more and more stuff.

"Rapid temperature change work on them too?" I asked.

"Cold only works on Meltdown, obviously, but get any kind of rapid temperature change on the other two and they'll be hurting. Oh, electricity nearly flattens them, that's a pretty recent entry. Totally disrupts their bodies and concentration on their shifted form," he added.

"That it?" I asked, and got an affirmative. "Thanks Popsicle, I owe you one."

As I snapped the phone shut, the rest of the people in the jet were looking at me oddly.

"Who was _that?_ " Ice Queen demanded.

"My friend Ethan. He's a Champion Debate master. What he doesn't know about superbeings isn't worth knowing," I said, feeling fairly smug.

"He's a citizen?" Ice Princess asked from the front.

"He goes to Sky High. He melts," I explained, heading off the expected question. "So, Winter Court is going after Meltdown and Tesla and I are handling Hydro and Cascade?"

Ice Queen looked as if she'd rather finish questioning me, but got back down to business.

"Actually, Frozen Duchess and Ice Princess on the minions, I want you with me and Telsa, Phoenix," Ice Queen corrected. "I know you can't hurt Meltdown directly, but we'll need your help if things get too hot for us to handle."

"You mean if he starts ripping walls down," I said. Indestructibility was only linked to pyrokinesis in the Battle family, so the rest of them were as vulnerable as a normal superhero.

"Exactly. Besides, with two different types of energy to contend with, he's not going to know what hit him," she explained, and I nodded in understanding.

"We're down," Ice Princess called, and I blinked. I hadn't even felt us slow or land.

"I'm the best pilot in the family," she said with a smirk as she came out of the front.

"Come on, exploding power plants make for unhappy clients," Ice Queen chided, shooing us all out the door. Unlike the bank in Berlin, there were no civilians anywhere around, and only a few police putting up the last of the barriers. A quick conference with one of them gave Ice Queen what she needed.

"They evacuated the workers already, and as far as they know, Meltdown is in the control room. Let's go," she said, and pushed in through the front doors. _What is it with these guys and front doors?_

The power plant was quite creepy, corridors lit only by emergency lights, strobes and alarms going off randomly as something interfered with the system. It was making me jumpy, as it gave far too good of cover for Hydro and Cascade to ambush.

"I don't get it. Why only three people for a plant this big?" I whispered to the others as we crept through the halls. Creeping was one way to keep from getting ambushed, in theory, because we'd be on alert the entire way. And with five of us going for the heart of this place, they _had_ to be waiting for us somewhere.

"Because Meltdown was probably hired with someone with more money than sense. Though more sense than he has, which isn't saying much," the Freezing Duchess whispered back. "He's a thug's thug, nothing more, no imagination and fewer brains-."

"Shh!" Ice Princess said, pointing subtly ahead. On the ceiling ahead was a fresh water stain, and I saw Winter Court grin savagely. Ice Queen gestured for the cryokinetics to come up, and counted, one, two, three. Simultaneously they powered up and flung bursts of icy cold power at Hydro and Cascade's hiding place. There was a faint crack from above us, and I looked up in time to see the ceiling begin to burn.

"Ambush!" I cried, and shoved Tesla ahead of me as the ceiling, and Meltdown, fell on top of me. It was like being hit with a ton of bricks, a burning hot ton of bricks, and I was crushed to the floor beneath his weight. Apparently Meltdown was a hell of a lot larger when he was shifted, because I could barely move at all. A faint gurgling filled my ears, and if Winter Court and Tesla were doing anything, I couldn't hear it at all.

I couldn't _breathe_ under his weight, and I felt my vision start to go black that had nothing to do with the fact that there was no light under here. I struggled hard under his weight, desperately trying to reach the oxygen caplets on my belt, and just managed to get a hand on them when Meltdown shuddered and suddenly retreated. I rolled back out of the way, gasping for breath, as Winter Court rained down blow after blow of cold fury. Tesla jerked me to my feet behind them, and let loose a lightning lance at a blob of water that went hurling past us, missing by inches.

"Damn it! Phoenix, get up, these two are getting on my nerves," she snarled, zapping at another one. There were two water blobs that were bouncing around in the corridor like mad pinballs, while ahead of us Winter Court kept hammering at Meltdown. He was huge, nearly filling the whole corridor to a depth of two feet, and glowing red-hot. Each time Winter Court struck him, he began to solidify and blacken, and was retreating with each hit. However, if Hydro and Cascade could distract them… There was no time to go back to our previously-discussed tactics, we would just have to wing it.

I snapped one of the oxygen caplets between my teeth, a cool rush filling my lungs, chasing away the last of the shaded vision and impending headache, and powered up hard. Soon lightning and flame filled the air in a deadly crossfire near the ceiling, as the two aquatic villains bounced around desperately in an attempt to find an opening to launch themselves at us or Winter Court. I snarled at them, and began to delay my fireballs, waiting for one of them to get overconfident enough to try to launch at me. It had worked on Speed, and I bet it would work on these guys.

"Phoenix, what are you _doing?"_ Tesla demanded, turning to me. At the same instant, both hurled themselves straight at us, using the moment of distraction to their full benefit. I flash-fried one, and it caromed off two walls before rolling to a stop and unshifting into a slender man in a liquid blue super-suit. Tesla's shot got off a second too late, missing by a hair, which was enough for Cascade to wrap herself around Tesla's mouth and nose. She choked, and I tried to reach in to help. If I were to use fire, I'd hurt Tesla.

Touching Cascade was just like touching water, and there was nothing for me to grab onto. Tesla frantically pawed at her face while I ripped impotently at Cascade's body, cursing her in Mandarin with words that would have brought the wrath of Mrs. Lee down upon my head. This was the problem our group had when dealing with those from Amorphous Club, no good way to fight them. In desperation, Tesla jammed her hands right into Cascade and powered up, blowing Cascade right off of her and slamming me into a wall.

All my muscles spasmed painfully for a second, and I saw stars, but my indestructibility saved me from worse. Cascade had unshifted and was slowly picking herself off the floor. I shoved myself up to hurl fire at them, staggering slightly, but still managing to wing her. She spun and just managed to keep from falling, as a scorched Hydro came up on her other side to support her. I took a single step forward to keep going after them, when a feeling of wrongness clamped around me so strong it literally stopped me in my tracks.

I turned back to look at Tesla, and my eyes widened to see her crumpled on the ground, water dribbling from her mouth and nose. Turning back to look at Cascade, I could see she was looking very thin and pale, but triumphant.

 _She left enough of herself behind to drown Tesla,_ I realized, as the two minions turned and ran. I should have gone after them, but I couldn't leave my aunt. It was actually like a compulsion, and I felt myself walking forward to put my hands on her shoulders like in a dream. The ember-fire sprang up willingly, with no conscious thought on my part, and I couldn't bring myself to stop. I could feel it burning the water out of Tesla's lungs, steam beginning to trail from her mouth as her body coughed and spasmed under my hands.

The hard shadows of water began to clear as coughs wracked Tesla's body, eerily turning back into blood as they lost their shapeshifted cohesion. I wasn't even in control of what I was doing anymore, and when the ember-fire finally let me go, after protecting Tesla from the steam it had been created, I actually fell backwards in an attempt to break its hold over me. I picked myself up carefully, bracing myself for a reaction, and reached down to help up a somewhat shaky and sweating Tesla.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded, her eyes darting around, looking for more enemies.

"Cascade, she tried to drown you. You electrocuted her, and me, but she left enough of herself behind to fill your lungs up," I explained. Hydro and Cascade were long gone, and I could see the pale forms of Winter Court returning from down the hall. I hoped wherever Meltdown was, he was in a lot of pain.

Tesla looked from me to the puddle of blood on the floor.

"Ah," she said. "Eww…" she added a moment later when she realized exactly what the blood was.

"I… couldn't chase after them, I'm sorry," I added.

"Well I have to say I rather like not being dead. What did you do to me? I've had CPR done on me before, and my ribs don't hurt enough for that," she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You already know," I said obliquely.

"Hmm… that's the way of it, is it? I'm very glad you were with me today Phoenix," she said simply, and gave me a hug. I awkwardly returned it. I just wasn't used to getting randomly hugged by people…

"Hey, heroes don't have to say thanks for saving each other, right? Because otherwise this could get kinda weird," I said, letting her go. Tesla smiled broadly at me.

"If you insist Phoenix. Mums the word," she said solemnly, as Winter Court strolled up to us.

"Meltdown is currently enjoying the wonders of a liquid nitrogen bath. That should keep him out of trouble until he can be arrested," Ice Queen said with satisfaction. "How are Hydro and Cascade?" I shook my head and Ice Queen sighed philosophically. "Well, we can't get them all the time. Come on… what's _that?"_ She pointed to the puddle of blood on the floor with some alarm.

"Part of Cascade. Don't ask," Tesla said with exasperation. Ice Queen shrugged and began to walk out. It turned out that the power plant kept liquid nitrogen around for some intensive machine cooling operations, and Winter Court had managed to back Meltdown right up into it. A furiously bubbling vat of the stuff was spewing out white fog as members of the Bureau's special extraction team tried to figure out the best way to get him out and into a transport truck.

This time there wasn't any press around, which was a relief, because I was starting to get a bad power reaction. By the time I was strapped into the jet, I was starting to shake slightly.

"Is there anything hot to drink?" I asked, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. Tesla dug into a cabinet and came up with a thermos of hot coffee. I had no idea why it was there, considering this was _Winter_ Court's jet, but I didn't care in the least. I drank at least half of it straight out of the bottle, and waited a minute for the warmth to penetrate. When the shivering stopped, I finally shoved off my helmet and put my head in my hands.

"He healed me," I heard Tesla say to the others, and I didn't even have the heart to grouse at her. "Cascade had filled my lungs up, and he healed me."

"Heavens!" I heard Ice Queen exclaim, and I could feel the eyes of the others on me. "Eyes on the sky 'Princess, don't run us into power lines!"

My cousin turned her attention back to flying as I drank down the rest of the coffee in two gulps. It wasn't the cold that was making me shake anymore; it was the emotional reaction.

"Warren, are you sure you're going to be all right?" Tesla asked softly. I nodded, putting my head back down in my hands and resting my elbows on my knees. Conversation picked up around me, and I didn't even listen. It wasn't like I hadn't been expecting to use my healing in battle, but it was the fact that it literally stopped me from pursuing Cascade that was making me shake. Tesla had obviously been very hurt, and the ember-fire had _demanded_ that I help her. What if next time it happened, the hurt person was a villain? What in the world would I do then?


	27. History

I was intending to ride the rest of the way in silence, not wanting to get into specifics about what I had done, and more or less tuned out everyone else. They had switched back to using German to talk and I didn't even care. I really should have been paying attention though, because a few minutes later Lauren put her hand on my shoulder, startling me to looking up at her.

"You're not all right," she said firmly, clutching her lightning-crown headdress in one hand.

"Seriously, I'll be fine," I told her shortly, trying not to snap.

"Bernadette and I grew up in a house with seven pyrokinetics. We know a bad power reaction when we see one," she pointed out.

 _Busted_ , I thought.

"I know this is perhaps not the best time, but Tobias will want to see you when we get in," she added. I nodded numbly, knowing already this was going to go badly. My temper was always the south side of unmanageable after something like this, and I knew I was going to be inclined to snap someone's head off. _Well, at least I know it now. Control… I can do this, it just takes control. Crap, what kind of control am I supposed to have when I can't even control my own powers?_

At least they gave me enough time to get cleaned up and changed, and a very hot shower did a lot for the vague feeling of cold within me. The last of the shaking had stopped finally and I realized I wasn't nearly as tired as I could be. That fight hadn't lasted very long, and even as tiring as healing was, I could probably go another round or three if I had to. And some days, I might. The thought wasn't necessarily comforting for me personally but… _How many more lives or livelihoods could you save?_ my conscience pointed out.

 _Right._ It wasn't like I didn't know what I was getting into when I signed up for this job. _Sure._ I just needed to keep telling myself that.

There was loud talking coming from the other side of Tobias' office door as I approached it, and Lauren cracked it a bit as I came near and waved me inside, putting a finger to her lips for silence.

"…we don't _need_ their help!" Tobias was saying heatedly.

"Ridiculous! You do realize we're probably some of the oldest active superheroes in the world, right? It's only because of our indestructibility that we've lasted this long," Reginald snapped. "The only reason we're not the target of geriatric jokes is because we don't lose!"

"I'm well aware of that," Tobias growled.

"Father, you hit the genetic lottery with us. Eight children, all with hero-class power? No other patriarch or matriarch has had such luck. Four active at one time is our average, not eight, and that's with mixed generations. We're going to _need_ help eventually, and I for one am delighted that they were willing to step up today," Reginald said with cool logic.

"We haven't exactly been high up on the list for help for that last near two decades, and it's about high time someone was willing to break that taboo and help us out when we needed it. I'm not going to apologize for thanking them, and I'm _not_ dropping them a letter to tell them to back off next time. Besides, they were young, and the last thing I want to do give new heroes the impression that us older ones won't accept their help," he finished, crossing his arms. Tobias glared at him with a stormy expression.

"It gives the impression that we can't do the job we were hired for. There are nine of you active now, ten if Warren's here, and that should be more than enough. We shouldn't be implying that we're so incompetent that we need aid from raw, young heroes. And particularly not those clowns!" Tobias said more calmly, though with an underlying anger that didn't bode well.

"Father, that's blatant snobbery and you know it," Reginald said.

"I don't like the message it sends. It's bad for our image," Tobias said finally.

"They did not have to save us. We were holding fine on our own. They simply wanted to help, just help, not take over," Reginald said very calmly.

"It looked ridiculous," Tobias said finally, sighing explosively.

"Anthony thought it was funny," Reginald said, repressing a smile.

"Cheerleading a supervillain into submission isn't _funny_ , it's _stupid!_ " Tobias snapped, throwing his arms up in complete exasperation, pushing out of his chair to pace.

"Well, she did help distract Dark Spring, and the fast kid _did_ help put Dark Summer down fairly effectively. It's always hard to know what to do with someone else with fire powers," Reginald said.

"And what about that other boy pulling Wind Demon down from the sky? That was actually extremely useful," Lauren added. "I saw the news footage on the flight back from Munich."

"You weren't there! That boy had elastic powers, for the love of God! That has to be one of the sillier powers in the entire history of-."

"Just because it looks silly doesn't make it any less effective," Reginald said primly.

I had been suspicious at the beginning of this argument, but now I was certain of it. And Reginald was right. This was funny. This was funny as hell. I just wish I had been there to see it. I started to laugh, and finally collapsed into a chair, doubled over and trying to get control of myself. Lauren was looking at me as if she wondered if I had just snapped.

"Warren? What's going on?" she asked.

"Those guys… Penny, Speed, and Lash," I got out.

" _What?_ Those classmates of yours you were protecting last fall?" Tobias said, and Reginald and Lauren choked down laughter behind their hands.

"I should have recognized them, I suppose," Reginald said very neutrally. "I didn't expect to see them in Paris."

I just shrugged as Tobias' face began to fade from its spectacular purple color.

"Never mind," he said finally. "I don't suppose Lauren called this meeting so we could argue about our image."

"No, and this is actually fairly serious," she said. I sobered up immediately; taking a deep breath before Lauren finally broached a subject I'm sure Tobias would find much more interesting than the family's image.

"When we were fighting today, Warren and I were together fighting Hydro and Cascade while Winter Court dealt with Meltdown. Warren was trying to lure them into coming straight at him, I think," she looked over to me for confirmation, and I nodded. I was feeling guilty that I hadn't taken a half-second to explain to her what I was doing. We could have avoided this whole incident if I had just said something to her.

"I didn't know what was going on, and when I turned to ask him what he was doing, they lunged for us. Cascade got herself around me, and I had to power up and touch her to get her off. But it didn't entirely work; she left enough of herself behind to drown me. I would have died, if Warren hadn't healed me."

Both Tobias and Reginald sat straight up and stared at me. I stared straight back this time. No matter how much it discomforted me to see the look in their eyes, I didn't think I would make a good impression by trying to shrug this off.

"Healed her? Blast, did you get the security tapes?" Tobias asked quickly.

"Yes, I got them taken and sealed before we even left the plant," Lauren said with a nod, and I felt a bolt of fear shoot through me. _Crap, I didn't even think of that. Crap, crap, crap!_

"Relax Warren, there wasn't even anyone in there to view them at the time. No one saw them, and it's not unusual for us to take the tapes. Or disk, in this case, it was digital. At any rate, it's under seal at the Bureau now, same as the rest of classified material," Lauren added to me. I forced myself to breathe a little slower.

"But you had a bad power reaction after we left, didn't you?" Lauren continued relentlessly, and I nodded, staring at my hands to avoid to having to look them all in the face.

"That wasn't a long fight. Is healing that hard?" she asked.

"It takes a lot out of me," I tried to explain.

"How much?" Reginald asked.

"It's like heat channeling, but ten times worse," I told him after a second, trying to find a parallel they'd understand, and saw both Reginald and Tobias wince. "I thought you all saw the tapes from the Gauntlet… I nearly killed myself the first time I used it."

"Seeing it on tape and watching your reaction in person are two different things," Lauren pointed out.

"That wasn't what I was shaking about," I told them softly. "I _couldn't_ go after Cascade. I… can tell when someone's hurt, if they're close, and when you were hurt, it stopped me in my tracks. Literally."

A barrage of glances flew around the room, and Tobias had a quick, fierce conference with his children in German. Tobias finally stood behind his desk after several long minutes.

"Warren, I believe I can say without conceit that our family knows nearly everything there is to know about our powers. We know every weakness, every strength, every quirk and trick that there is. The reason we know is because our powers breed true and clear. We don't often marry others with superpowers, but when we do, any superpowered children have Battle family powers, not another's. My wife Elizabeth is a cryokinetic, and her cryokinesis is a little different than what normally shows in our family. Yet Bernadette has Battle cryokinesis.

"It's always gone that way, for as far back as we have records. Our powers always show the same, no matter what kind of other powers are introduced into the bloodline. Until you. I thought we would be able to help you with any oddities that might crop up… but I was wrong. Never in our knowledge have we had any case of powers controlling their owner. We simply don't have the knowledge or experience to help you control what you have.

"You need to talk to your mother's people."

 _I cannot handle this right now,_ was my first panicked thought. I was beginning to understand how Ethan felt. He was an only child, but had this huge extended family that was simply everywhere. I had barely managed to wrap my head around the idea of dealing with my dad's relatives, and I didn't think I could deal with trying to talk with my mom's family as well. At least not right now.

Though one thing I did know was that I wasn't going to find any answers staring at the rug.

"I… need to go call her," I said, and stood. Everyone watched me as I walked out of the room, far less than steady in both body and mind.

* * *

"And that's how it went?" Mom went silent for a long minute, closing her eyes. I waited for a moment, then another. I had gone right to my room and put in a video call to my mother, time zones be damned. She hadn't looked particularly sleepy, and had listened to me with a kind of detached concentration that was very disconcerting.

"Mom?" I asked, and she put a finger up for me to wait. It was a long five minutes before she opened her eyes again.

"I think I know where I can find what we need. I'll call you back. I love you darling."

She disconnected, and I stared at the blank screen for a few seconds.

"Well, _that_ was useful," I muttered to no one in particular. Either this was going to turn out great, or the floor was about to drop out from under me. At this point, it was a complete toss-up of which was going to happen.

* * *

I must have dozed off, because the inevitable Chester was shaking me awake, telling me I had a call. I was so out of it I forgot to be snappy to him when he tried to straighten out wrinkles in my shirt. I just powered up one hand and told him to get out of the room before suffering unspecified fiery consequences. He was unimpressed, and just left the remote on my bed. It was like arguing with my cat, I swear.

When I finally connected the call, Mom had adjusted the video so it showed her worktable in her sanctum, now cleaned off and covered with a line of small, yellowed books. A dusty box was off to one side, carefully labeled "Margaret Peace."

"Who's that?" I asked her, already having an idea.

"Margaret Peace was my great-great-grandmother, born at the turn of the nineteenth century. She was also the last strong healer," she said simply. "These are her diaries."

I gaped at the box, then back up at Mom.

"Where were they?" I demanded. _Where were they last September?_ I wanted to ask, but by the look of doom on my mom's face, it was better to keep quiet.

"They were in my mother's attic. I had to go get them. I'll tell you about it later, I promise, but right now it's what's _in_ them that's important, not how I got them," she said, and I nodded as she slowly walked down the line, touching each cover in turn. "Can you stand some family history?"

"I better, because I don't think I have a choice," I told her, holding up one hand, flexing it slightly like I'd never seen it before, then meeting her gaze again. Mom nodded solemnly.

"All right, then this is what I've found out. It wasn't the rule for women to learn how to read and write back then, but Margaret did a lot of volunteering for the church, and learned from the priests. She did a lot of charity work, mostly amongst the poor, and that's how she found out about her powers. These people couldn't afford to see doctors, and Margaret just wanted to help. Then she powered up and realized she could heal them. She actually uses the words, 'chase the demons of illness out of them, by gifts granted from God.'"

"She had no idea what was happening to her," I said softly, feeling a pang of compassion for my long-dead ancestress. Despite the fact that I didn't know exactly what I was doing, at least someone had figured out that it _was_ part of my powers, and not some kind of curse. Mom shook her head in agreement.

"None at all. At first she thought she was being granted some kind of ability to perform miracles… But she soon learned that her strength was very limited, and she could only heal so much injury or illness at a time. She pushed herself very hard, and suffered a lot of fainting spells before her brother started protecting her from excessive demands. Theodore was some kind of dock laborer, from what I can pick out, and he basically went to bat for her."

Mom had taken on a lecturing tone, a little like Ethan when he got wound up, pacing back and forth, touching one or another of the diaries as she walked to make a point.

"She eventually married a man she healed from a terrible illness and had three children with him. Everything was fine, then Theodore was killed in an accident, run over by a wagon, and everything fell apart. She doesn't say why, but I think her husband was a little intimidated by everyone that came looking for her to heal them. People kept pushing in to see her, and he couldn't or wouldn't keep them out. And she literally healed herself to death."

I took a deep breath, able to feel it somewhat in my mind's eye, the feeling of cold expanding out from my core, of giving away all my fire until there was nothing left. A shiver ran through me and I shoved aside the mental image. Margaret hadn't been a pyro, but it couldn't have been any less frightening to give away everything you were until there was nothing left for yourself…

"Warren?" she asked, and I opened my eyes. "That's just her history. And she didn't know what was happening to her, but she wrote down everything she could. At the end… she began to call her powers a 'test from God.' I think she was getting a little cynical there in the last few months, because she called her powers her 'compulsion.'

"I think there were several times she tried to turn away from healing some people, but there were some things that made it harder for her to stop, and other that basically forced her to help," she said, and I sat straight up on the bed. _This was it._

"Severity of injury, physical proximity, and blood relations," she said very calmly, touching the second-to-last diary on the cover. "Think of all the times when your power just seemed to be pulled out of you. What were the common factors?"

That was easy enough to round down. The four worst injuries I had ever healed were also the ones where I hadn't even had to concentrate very hard to bring my fire up.

"Zack, Penny, Magenta, and Lauren," I said slowly.

"Each one you were close, each one you _didn't_ have to concentrate to know something was wrong because they were badly hurt," she said nodding.

"Penny…" I said, and trailed off. Penny hadn't been in any immediate danger, and of the four, she had had the least hurt.

"She already died once. Everyone else had a life-threatening injury and was also very close physically," Mom pointed out, and I nodded slowly, thinking hard.

"What about you? When Tobias burned you I could feel it outside the house!"

"Blood relations. I can tell what a normal person's feeling from maybe… fifteen or twenty feet away if I concentrate really, really hard. I'm usually much better at it if they're only four or five feet away, and it's easiest if I touch them. But I can tell what you're feeling from nearly a quarter-mile away without even concentrating," she said, and I nodded in understanding.

"You had a trifecta there with your aunt. A blood relative was dying nearly at your feet. I bet if you had been ten feet further away it wouldn't have hit you so hard," she said finally, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It wasn't a curse or some kind of aberration, just a logical extension of what I had. Not that I would have abandoned by aunt, and mom knew it, but…

"Cutter…" I started, and then shook my head. "Not life-threatening, right?"

"That, and I think part of _your_ power is you have to _want_ to," she pointed out. "That sadistic little… Anyway, she didn't _deserve_ it. And you certainly didn't want to help her."

"What about Will? I couldn't break my trance when I was trying to help him… and when I was trying to learn how to use it, I kept scorching everyone," I asked her. She pursed her lips slightly in thought.

"I think… with your power it's going to be very much a balancing game between concentration and need. When you tried to heal Will, your concentration was a _lot_ better than when you first tried it. You hadn't had Ms. Olsen's class before then, you had been working on your mental walls, you had been meditating… I know when you put your mind to something, you don't go halfway."

"So… how do I _un_ concentrate?" I asked. Figuring out my triggers for my healing powers was a huge weight off my shoulders, but it was pretty clear if I attempted any non-essential healing I could be taking a risk on someone else's behalf, if not my own. That would mean no practice for me, ever.

"I don't think you can. I honestly would say, you either need to _not_ heal those not in dire need of it, or have someone nearby that can shake you out of it when you need to," she said with resignation. Well… ok, that was probably wise. Anyone that didn't have a life-threatening injury I actually had to concentrate to realize they were hurt in the first place.

"So… no more little stuff," I said with some relief.

"I know it's not really comforting that you can't practice, but now that you know _why_ bad injuries trigger your power. And you can fight against it… if you need to," she said, the last a little sadly.

Mom knew about hard choices, and she knew that there might be a situation, some day, some time, where I would have to make a choice between healing a life-threatening injury and going after the person that caused it. That would suck. That would suck a lot. And the real bitch of it was I knew sometime it was going to happen. We didn't have those Moral Dilemma classes in school for nothing.

"At least I have my friends," I pointed out. "They'll help."

"I know they will darling. I'd hate you see you have to make that choice though. You know I'm always here if you need me," she added.

"Thanks. Mom, how did you get the diaries?" I asked her finally.

"It's a long story, and trust me, at some point I'll tell you, but not today. I've been through a little too much today to go through this twice," she said, sighing and hanging her head forward. I really wanted to hug her right then, because however she had gotten them couldn't have been easy, and it had obviously cost her a lot. But she was over three thousand miles away, and I couldn't do anything but talk.

"I love you Mom," I told her simply, trying to put everything I was feeling into my voice. Relief that I wasn't going crazy, my love and support for her for daring such pain to help me, my admiration for her courage… It seemed to help, and she smiled back at me.

"I love you too Warren. You'll be fine, and don't let this hold you back," she added sternly.

"I won't," I promised.

* * *

I didn't exactly tell my relatives what Mom had told me, but I made one or two oblique references to having "taken care of it," and that was all I was willing to tell them. For some reason, they didn't press, and for that I was grateful.

The next few days were busy, and I was getting a hard crash course in what my life was going to be like once I really got into the swing of things. I wasn't working at my cover job, instead I was teaching Thomas alongside my uncles. I wasn't training with the gang, but with my relatives. And I wasn't going after supervillains solo, but with the rest of the Battle family. But it was still a pretty good approximation. Though I still had questions, and life going how it was, I sometimes had to ask them when I could. Even when it might seem less than convenient.

Sometime around mid-week Fire Knight and I had ducked down behind a low brick wall as Mastermind's Destructo-Bots rampaged through the streets of Moscow. We were taking them down at a pretty steady pace, but we had to wait until they were close to strike.

"So, are you guys always this busy?" I asked him, turning to see the 'Bots were almost in range.

"My turn," Fire Knight said, popping out of cover to fling a short volley at its face, melting its electronic brain and sending the twenty-foot-tall 'Bot tumbling to the ground.

"Busy?" he said with a laugh as he ducked back down. "Phoenix, this has been a _light_ week so far. We sometimes get two or three calls a day, and rare is the time where more than three of us get to go together."

At the look of panic on my face, he chuckled.

"Don't worry, it's only because there are so many of us active that we get so many calls. Relax, the Bureau won't try you beyond your strength more than once," he said, and then it was my turn to fry the next 'Bot.

"Why more than once?" I asked, after the next one had crumpled.

"When the Bureau makes a mistake in gauging someone's strength, someone usually dies, you know that, right? It's part of the reason we haven't joined the European branch. That and we're a stubborn bunch of old fogies," he added. "I think that was the last of the 'Bots there."

 _Hmm…_ that _hadn't come up in class_ , I thought. Then again, why should it? The Bureau sure wouldn't admit to _that_ except under pressure, and really, what good would it do to admit it, except make everyone afraid and too wary?

"Just don't be too afraid to tell the Bureau where to stick their requests if they try you beyond your strength. Even if you personally have no intention of joining Fire Court, you could always use that as a club to get them to straighten out their act if they try something stupid," he told me, and held a hand to his ear. Apparently the elaborate headdress concealed communications gear, amongst other things, and I had privately resolved to copy it as soon as I got back home.

"Right, Fire King got the last one, we're in the clear," he said, standing slowly.

"I don't think I'm disillusioned with the Bureau yet," I told him, and Fire Knight shrugged.

"Good for you. Let's hope you never eat those words," he said with a little smile.

* * *

During my week's "vacation" we fought against Destructo-Bots, shapeshifters, cyborgs, and sentient blobs, as I found myself drawing on nearly all my lessons from Sky High, as well as picking my relatives' brains for anything I didn't know. Apparently what had happened with Meltdown was a freak accident, because I honestly didn't feel in any danger from most of them. There was no doubt that they were powerful, far beyond what a normal policeman or soldier could handle, and if a superhero weren't on hand to stop them, they could cause a lot of damage indeed. But they were often incompetent, greedy, cowardly, overconfident, or just plain _stupid._

These were all the weaknesses we had been told to exploit at Sky High, and I could see how the Battle family went after them with a will. Throw a little bit of tactics at them, and add a superhero or two that wouldn't run away at the first sign of conflict, and most of them folded fairly quickly. It almost seemed like we weren't needed, not really, right up until I listened, really listened, to some of the newscasts.

Superbattles from around the world were rattled off just before the sports scores on most broadcasts, but usually just at the end were the kinds of scores that made most heroes' blood boil. It was a sad fact that supervillains outnumbered superheroes. And most of them escaped from custody with annoying regularity. Supervillains waged battles of attrition against us. If ten villains were defeated one day, at least two others had gotten away with their schemes. If that hadn't been the case, I doubt anyone would even bother becoming a supervillain. Who would want to put all that work into just getting caught after your first caper? If superheroes hadn't been willing to put in as much work as we did, the world would be overrun with supervillains within a week.

The one redeeming grace was that supervillains hated each other almost as much as they hated us. There was luckily no equivalent of the Bureau for supervillains, for which I think all of us were very lucky. I couldn't imagine how much more of a menace supervillains could be if they had anything like the coordination we did.

* * *

On Saturday though, the day before I was supposed to come home, we got our strangest call of all. This time I was just going through my workout routine with most of the rest of Fire Court when Reginald pulled out the cheeping red phone. It was making a rather odd noise, though, not the usual ring for emergencies.

 _What other kinds of calls can you_ get _on an emergency phone?_ I thought as I put down the weights I had been using.

Reginald listened carefully to it for a moment, and then took the phone away from his ear and caught everyone's attention. Tobias was looking at him with an oddly knowing expression.

"We have a call off-contract," he said. "It's specifically for all of Fire Court, and Phoenix."

He wasn't saying something… but what was he holding back?

"It's from the Peacemaker," he continued, pressing a few buttons on the phone to connect it to the speakers in the gym. I blinked at him in astonishment.

"Thank you Fire King," my mom's voice echoed out from the sound system.

"We don't usually take off-contract business, unless it's an immediate threat. And considering it's _you_ , I doubt it's urgent," he said. I was still trying to wrap my mind around the concept that _my mom_ was calling her ex-husband's family. For help.

"I know, but it could become urgent in short order. I'm organizing a treaty in eastern Palestine. There's a border dispute I've been working on for two months, and I have to push it through today or it all falls through," she explained.

"I certainly hope you don't need us though. Unless one side or the other has hired supervillians?" he asked.

"No, nothing like that. As part of the signing, the militia on each side is going to destroy their weapons. I know they still have others in depots, but the symbolism of melting down their guns is a very powerful statement to each other of their commitment to peace. Normally I would just have equipment brought in to do it, but the roads are bombed out, and I can't afford to wait anymore. Will you do it? I just need you there to get the weapons to the point of uselessness, just so they can fulfill the letter of their treaty. They're very touchy about it, I'm afraid," she said.

"And they won't see our intrusion as-."

"No, they understand you're just substituting for the equipment I can't get."

"We're a substitute for a furnace, how flattering Peacemaker," Tobias drawled.

"Don't," I warned him, heat flashing involuntarily along my arms.

"Please, I _need your help_. You know how bad things are here, and one single treaty could lead to more if it holds. This has to happen now, today, and I don't have time to fly anything in to do this normally," she said.

"Yeah, we'll do it," I said, the look on my face daring the others to say no. Reginald didn't look at all cowed, but nodded anyway.

"Certainly Peacemaker. Send us the coordinates, we'll be there within the hour," he said calmly. I started to get up, and Reginald reached over and clamped down on my arm. He was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked, I realized belatedly.

"Do not _ever_ agree to something for the rest of us. We have other responsibilities, and if we get a call in the middle of this mercy mission, we may have to abandon it to aid those that have already engaged us for our help," he said sternly. "I don't object to aiding the Peacemaker, but her work is not our work. We're _super_ heroes, not border guards, and our presence at a political treaty could be damaging if not handled correctly. Do you understand me?"

I pulled away, and Reginald let me.

"Yes," I said tightly.

"I have a few things that I resent Warren. Being told what to do is one of them. I am responsible for this family," he told me.

"I know that," I said, a bit resentful, but not uncomprehending. If, say, Thomas had suddenly burst into the room and accepted or declined my mom's offer on all our behalves, I probably would be feeling the same right now. This was the same stuff, on a different level, that I would be dealing with in a couple years' time with my own group.

"Look, it's my _mom_ ," I explained, unwilling to fold. "She knows you have other responsibilities. This is a good mission; so what's the problem with going?"

Reginald's jaw worked slightly as he took that in.

"There is no problem Warren. I simply do not like being overruled on my own grounds," he said, his tone sounding final. "Let's get going everyone."

 _Get consent before you go promising stuff you can't deliver,_ my brain snapped at me. _Right._ _Engage brain first, then open mouth. Do not alienate your fellow heroes; you can't afford it, Peace._

* * *

The Fire Court jet circled above the dusty field where the treaty was to be signed, throwing up whirlwinds that tugged at two canopied-covered tables, coating the uniformed men under them with dust, and tugging at the white dress of the lone figure in the middle. Two tables, two sets of leaders, two large groups of armed men, and at the periphery, two groups of women and children, silent and waiting. The scene had a surreal quality about it, enhanced by my mom's presence in the exact center of the field, right between the two canopied tables.

Fire Knight landed the jet without a flourish, and we quietly filed out, Mom coming over to meet us. We didn't need to make an intimidating entrance, but I also doubted that making an overly familiar greeting to Mom would go over well. This was business, and it was a little strange to see how very elegant Mom was acting.

"Phoenix, Fire Court, I'm glad you could come," she said formally, making a little bow.

"We're glad we could help Peacemaker. This is a far sight better than flaming Destructo-Bots or frying sentient blobs," Fire King said with a small smile.

"Sentient blobs?" Mom asked with a raised eyebrow.

"It's been an interesting week," he said, carefully not smiling, considering the gravity of the situation all around him.

"Apparently. Please, just stand here and look dramatic. If things go as planned this should take less than an hour." The Peacemaker moved back out to the covered tables while the rest of us stood and soaked up the sunshine. Considering how it felt perfectly fine to me, I hoped this wouldn't take very long at all, because a normal person would probably start to fry in this heat.

The Peacemaker walked down the center of the invisible line dividing the two forces and raised her arms high, calling out in what I guessed what the native tongue of the area. I had no idea what she was saying (I hadn't even known she knew any other languages), but from the blank looks on Fire Court's faces, neither did they. Whatever she was saying was making heads begin to nod on both sides, and when she reached the end of her speech, both sets of leaders stood and gathered around her.

My breath caught when I saw all of them were armed, and the only thing standing between my mom and a bullet was her ability to convince others. If I had been in her position, I don't think I could have kept my composure. I might not have been as up on the political situation down here as she was, but I did know the earth here was soaked with blood from countless conflicts.

We watched tensely as each person submitted to the Peacemaker touching him briefly on the temples, then walk back to the tables. Papers were laid out for them to sign, treaties and cease-fires and who knows what else. There were a lot of them, and I was amazed at how patient everyone was being. How much work had my mom put into this single day, that not a single voice was being raised in argument?

Unlike the Stronghold's secret sanctum, which was part game room and part trophy room, Mom's sanctum was thickly strewn with maps and newspaper articles, geography and anthropology books, political reports and results from top-secret spy missions. Will's dad armored himself with his super-suit. My mom armored herself with knowledge. And ceremony.

One of the classes we had in Sky High was Theatrical Heroics. Intimidating poses, clever quips, stop-villains-in-their-tracks commands, that kind of thing. For people like Will and I, that stuff was mostly gravy, because we had plenty of power to back up anything we said.

But lower-power heroes, and people who worked as non-aggressive heroes, like my mom, used it all the time. This entire treaty signing had been organized with all the pomp and circumstance of a religious ritual; each gesture and word my mom made seemed to be filled with significance. I had never actually seen her at work at this level, and it was fascinating. She was carefully soothing tempers, making sure no one felt slighted or cheated, keeping people from making inopportune comments, and generally smoothing the way.

After a lot of reading and signing, the two groups of leaders went amongst their fighters, speaking earnestly to them, and I could see suspicion and anger slowly leaving peoples' faces. I snapped my eyes back to my mom. She was still standing in the middle of the field, apparently staring at a middle distance, but I could tell she was concentrating hard. Her powers worked best through touch, but that didn't mean she couldn't do anything from a distance; it was just harder.

Soon the two groups of leaders met face to face again, clasping hands, then taking their weapons and casting them into the melting pit, which I had my suspicions was actually just an evened-out mortar-crater. Slowly the fighters from each side filed forward, tossing their weapons away, some approaching my mom afterward, seeming to ask for what looked like a blessing.

I watched with curiosity as Fire King signaled for us to start channeling our powers to him. The women and children came forward from the periphery to embrace the disarmed fighters, their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons, and to begin to walk away. As the last of the fighters threw away their weapons, Fire King turned up the heat, and soon the weapons were melted into uselessness. The leaders stayed long enough to make sure we were done, and finally bowed to my mom before taking their own leave.

Mom signaled for us to wait until everyone was out of sight, and we were standing completely alone on the empty field, the smell of scorched metal and plastic in our nose, the dusty wind rustling our costumes.

"Thank you everyone. That went much better than I had hoped," she said quietly, wiping her forehead.

"You're very welcome Peacemaker," Fire King said formally, giving her a little bow, the rest of his brothers following suit.

"Phoenix, thank you for coming too," she added, coming up to me and giving me a hug.

"That was great Mom," I told her quietly, and hugged her back hard enough to lift her off her feet for a moment.

"Oh! Put me down," she scolded, and I complied, smiling slightly. "I thought you'd want to see how I do things," she added.

"Thanks," I told her.

"And I couldn't resist being a meddling mother and seeing how they're treating you over there," she added in an undertone. I looked sideways at Fire King for a minute.

"Decently, I guess. They've been pretty nice. Tobias wanted me to stay though," I added. Mom pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Do you want me to talk with him?" she asked finally. I shook my head.

"Don't. I've… I already talked to him once," I told her, and Mom gave me a knowing look.

"All right. I'll see you on Sunday night. Brian Coopman from Medic-Co called the house and reminded me he expects to see you for your night shift on Monday," she added, and I sighed a little. _No rest for the wicked. Or not-so-wicked._


	28. Unwelcome Surprise

On Sunday morning I finally left the Battle estate to fly back to Maxville, needing the extra day to get back in the right sleep schedule before going to work. I'm sure Tobias was hoping it'd be a little wrenching for me to leave, that I might turn back and suddenly declare that I'd stay. Of course, that didn't happen. The place was an amazing pile, but I don't think I could have lived there without having grown up there. My relatives were actually pretty nice people, but it was much easier to relate to them as fellow heroes than with all the baggage that came from being family.

Thomas said he'd write to me and tell me how he was doing with his powers, and Reginald had offered me a more formal farewell, telling me that I was always welcome in the Fire Court. The others hadn't been nearly so stiff, offering me a handshake (or a hug in the case of my aunts and cousins) before I finally was ready to fly off. Tobias himself was waiting at the foot of the stairs to the jet.

"I hope you'll consider returning some day," he said finally.

"Probably," I offered neutrally. "Definitely if I get a call, I'll be here." That wasn't what Tobias wanted though, and I knew it, but I didn't want him to get his hopes up. He didn't have any hold over me, and I wanted it to stay that way.

"Well then… have a good flight Warren," he said, and held out his hand. I clasped it briefly and nodded at him, and got into the plane to fly home.

* * *

Time zones being what they were, I ended up back at my house at some ungodly hour of the morning. But despite the time, when I stepped in the door, there were all of my friends, my friends' parents, and my mom, a bunch of food on a table, and a big banner that declared, "Welcome Home Phoenix!"

"Surprise!" they all yelled, as I dropped my bags in shock.

"What the-?" was the only thing I could get out, before being dragged into the living room and plied with cake and punch.

"Welcome home darling," Mom said, giving me a hug.

"What's all this?" I asked, trying to get my brain back in gear.

"Surprise party. Duh," Zack said logically, his mouth full of frosting.

"I've only been gone a week!" I protested, trying not to spill my punch as my cat took a running leap onto my shoulders and started purring.

"Yeah, a week in which you've managed to win a superbattle nearly every day!" Ethan pointed out, holding a folder that proved to be full of newspaper clippings about my exploits.

 _Huh… cool, I have exploits!_ There were some from foreign papers about the battles themselves, some about mom and me, some about me and Fire Court… I didn't see any that mentioned my dad, which meant either Ethan hadn't included them or there weren't any. I doubted the media would have been so discrete, so I decided to thank Ethan privately at some point for excluding them. I really didn't need to hear any conspiracy theories about my parentage; what went on in my head was bad enough.

"I kind of had help," I said faintly.

"You still did a great job, and I haven't seen a more auspicious start to a heroic career in a while," Mr. Stronghold said to me, clapping me on the back, carefully avoiding a swipe from Trixie.

"Uh… thanks," I said a little uncertainly, a little intimidated and embarrassed at getting that kind of praise from the Commander.

"Don't badger him Steve, he's had a long trip," Mrs. Stronghold chided, smiling at me and tugging her husband away.

"And they expect the same out me. Did you have to set the bar so high Warren?" Will complained when they were out of earshot. I laughed at that, and the rest of the gang joined me, Layla planting a kiss on Will's cheek, causing him to blush.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll manage to save the world three times over in the first week and shame us all," I told him. He looked like he wasn't sure to be encouraged or concerned by that.

The early-morning party continued apace, with all the adult heroes congratulating me at one point or another, mostly to my own embarrassment. I hadn't exactly been looking for praise; I had wanted to do this partially for me and partially for what the world thought of me. But after everyone had talked to me at least once, I got the rest of my friends together and retreated up to my office for a more private homecoming.

"So, what was is like? I mean, were you scared?" Layla asked me when I finally shut the door.

"Which times?" I asked her, dropping into my office chair.

"Any of them!"

I laughed a little and finally started talking, telling them what it was really like to be in a fight with real supervillains. It was funny, but after the ruthless viciousness of Cutter's Crew, most of the others hadn't seemed nearly so scary. Meltdown hadn't been that bad, as it was his sidekick Cascade that had given me the only real scare that week. The Destructo-Bots had been quite destructive, obviously, but they were actually pretty easy to deal with, provided you got them from a distance. Cyborgs really couldn't function that well if their cyborged parts were melted. And etcetera and so forth.

"I hate to say it, but Boomer really overtrains us," I confessed. "I don't want to get overconfident, but seriously, some of those guys are clowns."

"Yeah, no kidding. Did you hear about Speed, Lash, and Penny?" Magenta asked, and I had everyone laughing when I told them about the confrontation between Tobias and Reginald.

"So, what really happened with Cascade?" Ethan asked me, during a lull in the conversation. "Sorry, I checked the Bureau records, and there had been another video upload to your file."

All of my friends had been added to my allowable list for my powers when I graduated, because, well, they were going to be my super team. It would have been stupid to keep it just to the directors and my blood relatives, and I had taken care of it before I left for Europe.

"Apparently she can leave part of herself behind. She filled up Tesla's lungs and then got blown off when she got shocked," I explained. "And I had to heal her. Look -." I forestalled Ethan from erupting with another bunch of questions. "Mom found out some stuff about healing and… I need to talk it through with you guys at some point. Seriously, I know that. But you all have to be fried right now, and I have like half a zillion things to do in the next two days. How about Tuesday afternoon?"

From the owlish way most of them were blinking, I was right about the being fried part, and I actually got them to agree without too much of an argument. Finally the party wound down, and the parents called up for everyone to come home. Will lingered for a second though, after everyone else had left.

"So hey, um… I had a question for you," Will said finally.

"Shoot."

"Why didn't you tell us you were going to meet your dad's family until like right before you were going to go?" he demanded, crossing his arms and looking a little belligerent.

"I already told you, I didn't want you to talk me out of it," I told him. It had been a slightly cowardly move on my part to not tell them until it was almost too late, and I knew it, but it was hard to explain.

"Really? Do you think we would?" Will asked me, looking a little hurt. I blinked at that and actually felt a little ashamed.

"I just… it's my _dad's_ family," I tried to explain. Will nodded his head a little, and shrugged.

"Just don't make us have to pull a Yellowstone on you again. You start keeping secrets again and I'll figure _something_ out," he threatened.

"Scram Stronghold, or I'll tell your dad about what you and Layla _really_ do out on your roof," I shot back. He went scarlet, and finally conceded defeat.

* * *

I managed a little sleep after the homecoming party was over, only waking up when my mom shook me, telling me Principal Powers had everyone on a conference call. _Yeah, definitely no rest for the not-so-wicked._ She had news about the academy. That was more than enough to chase the last of the fog from my brain. I got connected just as I heard Ethan begin to ask questions.

"What about the academy?"

"We're still waiting for Warren," Powers said.

"I'm here," I said, stifling a yawn.

"Excellent. Good afternoon everyone! I have both bad news and good news. Yes, we found the location of the academy; it's in eastern Wyoming."

"Wyoming? Why there?" Will asked.

"Lowest population density in the lower forty-eight states, that's why. And it's underground, so picking a state in the Rockies would have been essential."

"What's the bad news?" That was Magenta.

"They have enough technopathic and telepathic shields on it to stop anything less than a full-scale invasion. Both Mind Mist and the Ghost were unable to continue to 'ride' with the Weaponsmaster past the first gate. So we know where it is, but we can't get in without putting together an army."

"So the gate stops anyone who's bugged?" Ethan asked.

"Basically. It can apparently detect telepathic presences, as well as astral projections, and stops communications and tracking gear cold. We can track her students outside the academy until our eyes bleed. But we can't get inside that way."

"This is such bullshit," I snapped. Short sleep hadn't helped my temper any, and I think I heard Layla stifle a gasp at my language to Powers. We had pinned so much hope on this tenuous link to the Weaponsmaster, and to get so far only to be blocked again was frustrating. Two steps forward, one step back.

"That is a true statement," Powers said evenly. She wasn't any happier about this than we were at least.

"Who does she have working for her that can make shields that good?" Ethan asked.

"She's had twenty-five years to have her people perfect and strengthen them, remember that. As for who exactly, from overheard comments we know that there are several members of the Tenney family that are technopaths, which is where she got _those_ shields. As for the psychics, there are plenty of mercenary villains with those powers she could have hired."

"So what's next?" Will asked.

"We tried the smallest and most subtle way of getting in, mental and astral 'riding,' and that didn't work. Full-scale assault it out; we have no idea who or what they have in there. The next step is something in between the two extremes. A shapeshifted spy," she said. "Or two. Or three."

Before Ethan could begin the usual barrage of questions, Powers interrupted.

"I don't know who is going yet Mr. Howard, but I'll let you all know as soon as they've made the requests. We're going to have to find some Sidekicks, I believe." Magenta made a superior little snort into the phone.

"Yes Miss Patterson, I know what you're thinking. Someone with like a shapeshifted form like yours would be ideal. We're also looking into people that can phase through objects and other things like that. This is a lot more dangerous than what Mind Mist and the Ghost were doing, so we're not going to be able to rush into this, I'm afraid."

"We have to be patient again?" Layla asked.

"I'm afraid so," Powers confirmed.

"But they've graduated by now, haven't they?" I asked, and Powers sighed.

"Yes they have. The Weaponsmaster was going to the graduation ceremony when our spies were blocked. So we have the location, and the knowledge that they definitely have one class active. But they're also going to delay, that much we know for certain. Be ready everyone, at least we know they're coming. _They_ still think we're in the dark about them."

That wasn't much comfort, but it was the best we were going to get for now.

* * *

Monday afternoon I was supposed to go to the Bureau office before going to my cover job. Mom had told me I was supposed to talk to someone called Mandy in the correspondence department. Whatever that was. And whyever that was for. Walking into the Maxville Bureau this time wasn't nearly as bad as the first time. People did seem to notice me a little more, but the looks I was getting this time weren't quite as veiled. At least, it didn't seem that way.

I got lost twice trying to find the correspondence department, but after navigating the Battle estate, a cube farm wasn't nearly so intimidating. These offices were mostly plastered with various pieces of paper, mostly different kinds of letters, along with drawings and pictures of various superheroes and other people that I didn't recognize. I didn't put two and two together until I had finally found the mysterious Mandy, a short, plump cheerful woman with short, dark hair, maybe a little younger than my mom.

"You must be Phoenix," she said cheerfully, grabbing and pumping my hand with no sign of trepidation, before sitting back down at her paper-strewn desk. "I'm Mandy Mayweather, and I'll be handling all your fan mail. I just needed you to let me know what you wanted done with it."

"Fan mail?" I said in shock. I shouldn't have been surprised, I really shouldn't, but I just hadn't given it much thought. Mom didn't seem to get anything in the way of fan mail, or at least she didn't have it plastered all over the walls of her sanctum. Will's parents didn't either, but for all I knew they could have a fan mail vault I just hadn't seen.

"Yes indeed. You have quite a bit already, I was impressed. Then again, we don't often get new heroes that make such spectacular entrances. So, what's your pleasure?" she chirped.

"I… have no idea," I said, shaking my head. Mandy laughed self-depreciatingly.

"Silly me, you're _new_. Sorry, we sometimes shuffle heroes around and… oh never mind, just take a quick seat and I'll give you the run down. All your fan mail comes to your local branch of the Bureau, and we process it for anything unpleasant, poisons or bombs or whatnot. Then your assigned processor or processors opens it and sorts it for you and does what's requested with it."

"Like what?"

"Oh, some people like to read everything, particularly people that don't get very much. Mostly sidekicks and whatnot. The Commander and Jetstream just get the highlights of their fan mail; otherwise they'd _never_ get anything done. I think sometimes their fan mail volume exceeds Maxville as a whole, and they have a whole staff assigned just to them. If they read all of it, they wouldn't be able to do anything, even sleep!"

"Huh," I muttered. That kind of figured. I wondered what they _did_ see.

"Trust me, we open your mail for a reason. You really don't need to see some of the things people send you. Super junkies… they send the most ridiculous pictures. Some of them have made it their goal in life to sleep with a superhero and will send anything as 'bait.'"

I attempted not to choke. Or blush. I failed at both, but Mandy politely kept talking over my embarrassment.

"They aren't even worth mentioning. We get those letters with every new hero, as regular as clockwork. Though, on the other hand, you got some truly lovely fan art, drawings mostly. Some of your fans have genuine talent," she said, pulling out a few folders. "Oh and you got some very pretty official thank-you letters from some of the places you saved."

Mandy pulled them out without being asked, and I was fairly impressed both by the elaborate, engraved thank-you letters, and the truly well-done drawings some people had sent me. Some must have caught news footage of me in action, or seen me personally, or had really good imaginations, because there were several really cool ones of me using my powers. Silently she also passed me a sheaf of letters in a folder. I began to flip through them, my mouth starting to hang open.

Only about half of them were in English, but even the ones written in Russian, or German, or other languages were pretty clear in their intent. "Thank you for saving my daddy's work," "Thank you for saving my house," "Thank you for making the bad robots go away, they were scaring my baby brother," and on and on. Little crayon or pen doodles accompanied some of them, mostly of my phoenix symbol from my super-suit, or of a red stick figure throwing orange blobs against stick-enemies. These were the letters from children I had saved, in one way or another. I actually felt tears stinging my eyes for a second before rapidly blinking them away.

Mandy passed me another sheaf, this time mostly from adults. Oddly enough, though slightly more articulate, they were a lot like the kids' letters, though minus the crayon doodles. People wanted to thank me for saving the places that they worked, for making their streets safe, for making _them_ feel safe.

"You know, there's something your mom once said to me, while she was reading her letters. It was a quote from someone else I think, but I don't know whom. It was something like, 'You lay awake at night thinking of all the lives you haven't saved, but no one ever tells you all the lives that were spared by your actions.' That's what these are for, you know. When things get tough. I mean, I know you've only been official for a week, but… I do your mom's fan mail too, and we talk sometimes," she offered. I looked over at her in surprise.

"Yeah… Mom'd say something like that," I said, handing the letters back after a minute, getting myself back under control. I hadn't had a bad fight yet, barring Meltdown, but I knew that sometimes I would. I wasn't being cynical, I was being practical, or so I told myself, and having something like this supporting me _before_ it happened again was very comforting. Trust my mom to set it up that way.

"Wait, Mom gets fan mail?" I asked suddenly, as the meaning of Mandy's second comment sank in.

"Oh yeah. I mean, not as much as the Commander, but she gets some. She has a whole book full of copies of treaties and these flowery thank-you letters from different government officials. And she gets a lot of letters from wives and kids. I mean, the macho military guys are usually a little too uptight to thank her informally, but from the families she gets bunches! _They_ know what she did."

She pulled out a scrapbook from another drawer and held it out, letting me flip through it. There were letters on dozens of government letterheads, copies of treaties with elaborate seals, formal pictures from signings… I hadn't been looking at the dates, so it was the pictures that tipped me off; Mom looked incredibly young in them.

"These aren't… recent, are they?" I asked slowly. Mandy shook her head.

"Ah no, Joy keeps her current things at home. This is everything from… before you were born. She… brought these back shortly after she moved back to America. Or at least that's what the logbook says," she said quietly. I idly flipped through a few more pages, and then closed the book.

_Bite the bullet, ask it, Peace…_

"Is there anything here for my dad?" I asked after a second. Mandy slowly turned and put my mom's book away, pulling out another from the bottom of the drawer.

"Joy said you might ask for this, I brought it up from Storage yesterday," she said softly, and handed it to me.

I flipped through a few pages, staring at the same kinds of thank-you letters, some written in other languages, but all of them profusely thanking the Red Knight for saving them. Letters followed, some even from kids, all with the kind of artless gratitude that could only come from being saved from a life-or-death situation. I turned a few more pages, finally finding a picture of my dad in his full superhero costume, made of red mock-chainmail, rescuing a child from a burning building. I stared at it for several long minutes, and finally snapped it shut and shoved the book back at Mandy, a little harder than I intended to.

 _He's insane. He's absolutely crazy. What the hell is wrong with him that he'd give that up?_ Those were questions I had asked myself plenty of times, but after standing on the steps of the bank in Berlin and hearing people cheer for me, to have looked at letters of people whose lives I had influenced… It had been easy enough to hate my dad growing up just because of what he had done to my mom and to her life. It was easy to hate him because he was a murderer, because I looked like him and had his powers, and because of the way people who knew of him looked at me.

But now I didn't hate him. Right now I pitied him.

"I um… have something that might give you a bit of a laugh, if you like. You look like you could use one," Mandy said after a few seconds.

"Yeah… that'd be fine," I told her, snapping myself out of the blue funk I was going into.

"These are your rabid fans here, teenage girls mostly," she said, handing a third sheaf of papers, much thicker than the other two. I flipped through them with a combination of growing amusement and horror. This was unabashed hero-worship of the most literal kind, liberally spiced with trendy phrases and spellings.

 _Phoenix ur so hott! So awesome to see such a cutie! You can save me anytime! Love you, XOXOXO! I totally joined your fan club can you send me a picture? I luv your costume, it's sooooo kewl!_ And on, and on, and on, written on pink stationary, or printed with flowers, or covered with tiny little hearts…

I was laughing before going through a quarter of them, shaking my head in disbelief.

"And that is the edited pile. There were worse ones, but I weeded them out. I've been doing this for six years, trust me, I know you don't want to see what I tossed," Mandy said.

"I believe you," I said, handing the lot back to her.

"So, do you want me to keep everything but the dregs? Or just want me to clip the highlights? What's your pleasure?" she said in a more business-like tone, shuffling the folders a little.

"What… what do you do for my mom?" I asked her. I honestly had no idea what was "normal" for this kind of thing.

"Keep nearly everything but the psycho letters, organize them by event and chronologically, and tag any unusual ones for special attention," she said briskly.

"Yeah, sure, that sounds… great," I said quickly. "Wait, do I have to write back?"

"If you want to. I mean, most people understand that heroes are busy, busy people, but it's considered polite if you write back to at least a few. I try to find the people that are really deserving and mark them for Joy," she said.

"Sure, that's fine," I said with a sigh of relief. If Mom trusted her, then I could do the same. Besides, I wanted to thank those that had drawn the pictures.

"Oh, did you want to have an official letter sent out to your fan club?" she asked before I could get up. I looked a little pained, and she smothered a giggle.

"Sorry, there's this kind of unofficial rule. Whichever fan club gets a real letter from their superhero first becomes the 'official' one," she explained.

"How about I get back to you on that?" I said, not even wanting to contemplate the avalanche of pink, flowery stationary that might provoke.

"No problem. Ok, that's all I needed you for Phoenix, thanks for coming in!"

"Thanks," I told her, getting up. I swear, hero work got more complicated every day.

* * *

Monday night I was down at Medic-Co's main office. I had been in and out of here for the last few months as I had been taking classes and getting my EMT license, and had made a few friends out of my future co-workers. A couple of them recognized me from the Paper Lantern, but luckily I hadn't gone to school with any of them. That had been my one real concern, that I might end up working with some of the people I had gone to junior high or elementary school with. I had a cover story ready in case I did; it was the same one all Sky High graduates used, about a private school called Maxville Prep that I had allegedly attended for the last four years.

What was frustrating was I couldn't tell them about what was basically the most important thing in my life. It wasn't like I didn't have experience in acting normal, but when you realize that you're never going to be able to make the slightest comment about what you really do… It was that realization that kind of brought to light how much having real friends in the form of Will, Layla, Zack, Ethan, and Magenta had changed me. Three years ago I wouldn't have cared if people had talked to me, because I certainly hadn't wanted to talk to _them._

Unlike working at the Paper Lantern, people at Medic-Co didn't know a thing about me. They didn't know my dad was in prison, they never knew I had been poor, they had no idea that I used to get into fights all of the time and might be considered dangerous by some. The Lees and most of their employees hadn't cared, but they still _knew._ I could create a whole new persona of Warren Peace here if I wanted to. Here I didn't necessarily need to keep people at bay, not if I didn't want to. I didn't need to make people fear me because my powers were so uncertain. People here didn't have a reason to want to go after me like some idiots had when I was younger.

On the other hand… One of our classes at Sky High had been Concealing Your Secret Identity, which included a lot of guest lecturers. Most of them were active heroes, a few inactive, and a few Bureau officials that handled inadvertent exposures (like Will two years ago when he had, in full view of two citizens, helped lift Sky High back up above Maxville). We had been warned, time and time again, about being careful with office gossip, to not show an insider's knowledge of who had been where, of not to publicly correct inconsistencies in newspapers or magazines about us.

It wasn't like we had to keep ourselves totally out of the media. Steve and Josie Stronghold had their faces and names on signs and bus benches all over the city. Penny obviously had managed to wrangle herself a model's position in Paris, and that wasn't exactly a low-profile position either. But it still meant we had to be very discrete. The Strongholds really didn't invite any of their co-workers over for casual visits, because they last thing they needed was for a friend to drop by unannounced and accidentally find one of them in costume.

So yeah, we could have friends outside of the superhero world, but having _close_ friends that also weren't superheroes was tough, nearly impossible. It worked in some cases, Zack and Ethan's moms, as well as Layla's dad, were all citizens, though they still knew what their spouses did for a living. But no one brought their cover job co-workers home casually. Superheroes really couldn't afford too many more-than-casual friends, because of the risks involved.

"Hey Coop!" I said.

"Hey Peace! Hey, I wanted to tell you thanks for taking the night shift. You wouldn't believe how much bitching and moaning we got from the rest of the class when we handed out who was going where," he said, standing up and reaching over for some papers on his desk.

Brian Coopman, or Coop, was my supervisor and had taught a few of my classes. We were friends after the few months we had known each other, but it hadn't gone beyond much more than talking about sports, work, or weightlifting. Coop wasn't much of a prying guy, which made it a lot easier to be friendly.

"Well, I'm a night owl anyway," I told him, accepting my new badge from him and signing the last few forms he gave me.

"Good for me, it's hard to keep people from wanting to transfer out all the time and I never know who I'm supposed to have on shift," he said in an exasperated tone of voice, taking the forms back and throwing them in a drawer. "Anyways, I have your partner coming in here soon, she should be here any minute."

"She?" I asked with trepidation. Coop laughed and smacked me on the back.

"Don't worry. Man, it's a damn good thing you never look in the mirror or the rest of us guys would be forced to kill you to get any ladies for ourselves," he snorted.

"Look, there's a difference between getting asked out and getting hunted," I pointed out, and Coop just kept laughing.

"You broke the hearts of damn near every girl in class without even trying, Peace," he said. I rolled my eyes.

"Their problem, not mine. I wasn't encouraging anyone," I said, like I had the last fifty times.

The few people around work that had tried to get to know me a little _too_ well I had to give the brush-off, going back to the same tactics that had worked so well before in school. The unfortunate thing was all of those had been women, for some reason, and now the scat was I had either just come off of a bad relationship with someone that had broken my heart and I was afraid to love, or I was gay. As hilarious as both of those were, I just stayed the hell away from the gossipmongers to avoid giving them any more ammo. I couldn't have come up with a cover this elaborate if I had tried, and I hadn't even officially had my first day of work yet!

Coop had been riding me about that ever since Valentine's Day, when I had valentines from every unattached female in class stuffed in my notebook. The fact that I hadn't responded to any of them (and there had been a shameless amount of phone numbers included) gave some people the subtle hint that I wasn't looking for anyone right now, but some others had gotten the opposite idea. Luckily no one had gone into stalker mode, but after going back to being "scary" for a couple of weeks, I had shaken off most of them. Still, there wasn't any single former female classmate of mine that I trusted alone with me in an enclosed vehicle for several hours.

It wasn't that I didn't like girls. It was partly what I had told Coop; I didn't like the idea of being hunted. There had been a few girls at Sky High that had the same crazy romantic notion that they could break me out of my brooding shell, and I hadn't liked it any better then than I did now. Not to mention it put me in mind of some of those crazy fan mail letters. I didn't want some kind of rabid fan that wanted to be with me just because of what I was or how I looked.

Coop had joked that I never looked in a mirror. That wasn't strictly true. It was just that ever since I had seen my dad's picture when I was little, looking into the mirror was like seeing him looking back out at me. Intellectually, that was crap and I knew it. But it was hard to shake old habits. Particularly not after having met my dad's relatives, who had commented more than once on how much I looked like him. Citizens wouldn't know, nor would they care, but when I saw myself, I didn't see how I looked, I tried to see what differences there were between him and me. It was stupid, melodramatic even, but there it was.

It was also partially that I worried about my secret identity, and I would absolutely hate to put someone that I cared about at risk because of my real job. The rest of my friends had it really easy in that respect. Will and Layla, Zack and Magenta already knew what they were getting themselves in for. And Chloe might be a citizen, but from Ethan had told us, she could obviously take care of herself. Besides, if she didn't know he was training to be a superhero yet, she'd either find out or Ethan would tell her. If things got serious between those two, I had no doubt he'd want her to know.

That led me to me to another serious problem, something Will had reminded me of inadvertently when he talked about his fear of accidentally hurting Layla with his powers. I was an emotionally-fueled pyrokinetic, and I honestly wasn't entirely sure of my control if things got… well, past first base. My Battle relatives' powers worked a little differently than mine, and since their spouses were all unburned, I guess there must have been some trick to it. I certainly didn't want to ask Mom about how I had been conceived though; there were some things that were beyond my comfort level. I sure as hell wasn't going to ask my dad, and I didn't know my relatives enough to broach _that_ subject with them.

Even with all of that buzzing around in my head, it wasn't like I was desperate to find someone to share my life with. Sure, all my close friends were hooked up with somebody, but it didn't mean I felt like I was inadequate for not ever having had a girlfriend. I had been so uncertain of exactly who and what I was for such a long time that the mere thought of complicating that with a relationship made me laugh. And now that I had several big secrets to keep… It was not a good time to go looking for love, even if I had felt I needed it.

I was also cursed with my mother's perceptiveness. That was what turned me off so much about both those fan mail girls and the valentine-givers in class. They weren't interested in _me_ ; they were interested in an idea of me. I didn't necessarily consider myself a romantic, but _if_ there was someone out there, I didn't want a one-night stand.

 _Aww, big bad Warren Peace wants true love and a happy, fairy-tale ending. Guess what, that doesn't happen to people like you,_ my brain had snapped at me.

 _It happened to the Strongholds, the Howards, the Evans, all my friends' parents,_ I had told myself.

 _What about_ your _parents? There's the true litmus test._ I couldn't even refute that, and the thought was depressing.

"Yeah, well, Keller is the only female that _didn't_ put in a request to get you as her partner, so you're safe," he said, and I sighed in relief. Thank God, I didn't think I could have handled another person who just wanted to jump my bones. I had been perfectly prepared for people to hate me, both as Phoenix and as Warren Peace. I hadn't expected them to _like_ me, and that had brought its own crop of problems with it.

"I don't recognize the name though."

"Oh, she's been on the nightshift for the past… nine months or so. Way before you started class at least. Anyways, she tends to come in early and leave late, so I doubt you would have ever seen her. Hey, there she be! Keller, this is your newbie," he said heartily.

I didn't recognize her at first. She had on the same uniform I did, with the same navy vest and hat; her black hair was tucked up under it. She wasn't any taller than Layla, with dark walnut skin that bespoke of Indian heritage. But when she actually looked up at me, then I realized whom it was. The last time I had seen that sharp-featured face, she had been holding Magenta's shifted form, right before collapsing in Speed's vortex.

It was Painbreaker.

_This is not happening to me…_

"Monica Keller, Warren Peace," Coop said, making the introductions. "Now am-scray, you guys are in section four, Sixth and Main."

"Thanks Coop, I'll try not to run him ragged," Keller said evenly, and turned to leave towards the garage. I took two steps to catch up with her, checking to make sure Coop had gone back to his paperwork before grabbing her elbow and steering her into an out-of-the-way hallway.

"We need to talk," I hissed through clenched teeth. Keller looked back at me curiously, blinked once, and widened her eyes in shock.

"You," she whispered, and looked around sharply. No one was here now, and I needed answers before we took another step.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded quietly, keeping a hold of her.

"Working my cover job, same as you," she replied, not quite looking at me.

"In Maxville? Bullshit. Where are the others?" I hissed.

"Others?" she asked, looking bewildered. She honestly seemed surprised, but she couldn't be stupid.

"Cutter, Bruin, the rest of your group, where are they?" I snapped. She looked down at the ground.

"You can't expect me to answer that," she said softly. I held onto her elbow a little harder, holding onto control very hard, heat flashing along my skin. I was remembering Zack's screams when she tagged him; how she had obediently held Magenta, ready to send her into agony at Cutter's nod. I wanted to do something horrible to her, to make her pay for the pain she had inflicted on my friends, but I didn't dare.

It would be wrong, terribly wrong, and with the anger curling in my gut at seeing an enemy at a place I thought was going to be safe… If I started I might not be able to stop. I felt a shudder go through me as I reined in my temper, but my grip didn't let up. I hadn't felt this kind of anger since I had fought Will in the cafeteria almost two years ago, and right at that moment I hated both her for bringing it up and myself for giving in even the tiniest bit to it.

Keller stared at her elbow with a kind of detached fascination, and finally looked me straight in the face. Her eyes were oddly bright and her expression was serene.

"You can't threaten me with physical pain," she said very calmly. I felt a shock as severe as if I had just been plunged into cold water, and let go. _Heroes don't hurt people. And with her powers, it wouldn't matter what I do to her._

"How about jail time?" I shot back, getting my metaphorical feet back under me. She actually looked a little startled at that.

"If you try to take me in, I'll fight. I think you'll win, but I'll fight, and we'll blow both of our covers doing it," she said quietly, staring at her feet again.

_Damn it, she's right._

"Give me a good reason why I shouldn't take the risk anyway," I told her. She didn't need to know how much I didn't want to break my cover.

"You just want a little normalcy before going out to save the world," she said simply. "And heroes don't take people out of their cover job; it's rude."

"That doesn't answer my question," I pointed out. We hadn't exposed Bruin for some of the same reasons, but I still needed to hear _her_ excuse.

"Please don't. I… I won't do anything. You haven't heard anything out of me, haven't you? I've been working here nine months. I haven't been _working_ ," she pleaded, emphasizing the last word.

I glared at her and took two steps back. The words wouldn't have made sense to anyone else, but I saw what she was getting at. If she had been working as a supervillain, _somebody_ would have seen her by now doing _something_. Or the Bureau might have picked up victims of her powers at local hospitals or clinics. Since nothing of the sort had happened… She had been telling the truth.

 _Nine months and hadn't been doing any supervillainy? So what else could she be doing here? Not enjoying the scenery…_ It came to me in a flash, so obviously I nearly smacked myself in the head. It was the exact same reason Royal Pain had roped Speed, Lash, and Penny into her scheme.

"You're a spy," I said, and when she looked away from me, I knew I was right.

"I had _no idea_ who you were, and I certainly didn't expect to have you assigned to me as my partner," she offered diffidently.

"So what are you spying for?"

"I can't tell you," she said, still looking away. Well, I wasn't expecting a straight answer, but at least she didn't try to lie to me. I was torn. I could try to take her in and risk both of our cover jobs. Or I could lie low and try to figure out another way to beat her at her own game.

I truly hated the idea of blowing my cover after having spent so much time establishing it. The only reason I had the relatively plum assignment of Maxville was because I was waiting for my friends to graduate. This being the Commander and Jetstream's hometown, they didn't really _need_ the help. But since they did a lot of jobs all over world, courtesy of Jetstream's flight speed, sometimes they didn't mind the extra help at home.

If I blew my cover here, I'd have to go to a different town entirely, away from anyone I knew. But would it be worth it to take in a member of Royal Pain's supervillain academy? Was cracking the cover of the superhero world worth putting her in the Bureau's hands?

Or should I wait, and spy on her in return? Sure, I could probably take Painbreaker in, only to discover she knew little more than Lash, Speed, and Penny, leaving us exactly where we were, with virtually nothing.

Though I was of the opinion I would never be a good spy, everyone at Sky High had to learn at least a little about the trade. And there was one thing I remembered very well from that class. "The best spy is one you know." A spy you know is a spy can be fed false information. And if she were going to be spying on the superhero world in general (at a guess) or even me in specific, what would be worse? To let her spy on me from an unknown distance, or to be right there to try to control what she learned?

I glared at Keller with venom, knowing both choices sucked and not liking it one bit. I didn't trust her with anyone else, now that I knew she was here, so I either had to stick with her or give her up to the Bureau.

 _Screw it, the Bureau has found barely anything about the academy since we defeated Royal Pain. Maybe shaking down one spy of theirs will give us what our own spies can't,_ I thought finally. Sure, we had the vague location of the academy now, but no way in hell of getting in any further than the door, not with who and what we had right now. _It's time for something completely different. And not just shapeshifted spies. I don't think we can afford to wait that long._

As Zack might have said, it was just so crazy, it might work. The thought of Zack also had me make up my mind _not_ to tell my friends about this. Maybe Magenta or Ethan could keep this a secret, possibly Layla too, but I definitely wouldn't trust Will to keep his mouth shut on this. And Zack… I wasn't even sure exactly how Zack would react, but I could guess it would be bad.

If I was right, and I managed to feed the academy false information through Painbreaker, we could begin to take down the academy from within. If I was wrong, and she ended up turning on me, it would be better to keep the damage contained to one person. Heroes were given a lot of latitude in how they worked, and right now I was going to take it for all it was worth.

 _And that's not much right now. This is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, you peacock-brained buffoon!_ my brain screamed at me. I agreed, but ignored it anyway.

"Fine. We have a shift to work, let's get going," I said after a moment. Keller snapped her eyes up from the floor, but didn't question her good fortune in not getting hauled into the Bureau.

"We probably won't be that busy, it's only Monday, and four isn't that bad of a section to work…" Keller started up as we began walking towards the garage. I paid attention to what she had to say, because now I had no choice. Not only was she my partner, but also she was our only solid link to the academy, and I couldn't afford to let anything she said slide. Anything might be useful, particularly when the stakes were this high.

Maxville was divided up into sections, and we were supposed to go and park our ambulance in our assigned place, so we'd be close enough to help anyone in that area. The city was big enough that that was much more efficient than keeping us somewhere central. Keller drove while I quickly went through where she had stored everything in the back, making sure I knew what was where in an emergency. They were supposed to have a standard layout, but everyone tweaked their own just a bit.

She was silent the entire drive, other than answering a few direct questions about where something was, and by the time she had parked, I was completely tense. She had completely shut down and gone virtually opaque, just listening to the scanner with all of her concentration. So I nearly jumped out of my seat when she talked next.

"I guess you took this job so you could be where rescues are needed, right?" she said into the thick silence. I looked sideways at her, but didn't answer.

"That's the only thing that makes sense really. Hard choice for a pyro though, to be in a vehicle with pure oxygen. Your self-control is really very good," she continued. "You could have hurt Cutter a lot worse than you did, just to make your point, but you didn't."

 _Is she trying to bait me?_ I thought incredulously.

"I'm a hero," I told her. "I'm supposed to take the high road." She actually winced at that.

 _Hypocrite,_ my brain told me. _Who was contemplating burning her not an hour ago?_

 _At least I didn't actually follow through,_ I pointed out.

"I suppose you must think me very weak, doing what I do," she said finally. How was I supposed to answer _that?_

"I'm sure you have reasons," I said, my tone acidic.

"Terrible reasons, I'm sure. And now I'm supposed to relate to you my whole sob story so you'll feel story for me and leave me alone," she replied, leaning back in her seat, staring at the ceiling.

"You're not that stupid to think I'm going to fall for that," I told her, glaring.

"And you're not so stupid to believe it. They told us that making a hero feel sympathy for us might get us a short reprieve that we could use to run away or attack at a weak point," she said, closing her eyes.

"So, does it work?" I asked her sarcastically. At this point I was honestly prepared for her to do anything. Attack me, start driving out of town, flee on foot…

"I don't know. So far, it hasn't. Maybe if I were younger, angrier, and crazier I might believe it would. But since you're ready to burn me alive if I even look at you sideways, I'm not going to bother. I told you, I like this job," she said.

"You're really strange," I told her finally. I don't exactly know what I expected from talking to a supervillain, but her oddly fatalistic acceptance of the fact that I wasn't going to let her get away with anything was entirely not what I had in mind. She turned to look at me curiously.

"So are you," she said back. "How about a deal?"

"I don't deal with supervillains," was right on the tip of my tongue, but I didn't say it. Cliché would have been an understatement for that, not to mention counterproductive.

"What kind of deal?" I asked instead.

"How about we both pretend we're as normal as we can get and not mention what we do for our day jobs again unless we have to?" she suggested.

"How about if I ever catch you using your powers on anyone, I haul you into the Bureau?" I countered.

"Done," she said suddenly, reaching over with her hand. I clasped it for a second, watching her sharply for treachery. She seemed to be telling the truth, but I could feel the beginning of a stress headache behind my eyes. I could tell it was only going to be the first of many.


	29. The Silence of the Lambs

I found out a few things that night. One, Keller didn't try to attack me. Two, most people are overprotective hypochondriacs. We only had a few calls that night, all for things that I didn't think even rated an emergency room visit. A bump on the head, a fender-bender, someone who had taken a hard fall, and a guy who thought he was having a heart attack, but only had heartburn. Coop had made jokes about that in class, about how we'd spend a lot of our time wiping people's snotty noses, but it was kind of ridiculous to see it in real life.

Nothing even gave me a hint of trouble with my powers, and I honestly spent most of the night more worried that Keller was going to do something than worrying about the patients I was supposed to be transporting. But other than purely necessary conversation, she didn't even talk to me for the rest of the night.

At seven a.m., when we knocked off, Coop was waiting for me at the exit.

"So, did Keller try to jump your bones or get your number?" he asked, smirking. Keller chose just that moment to walk out past both of us, nodding solemnly to each.

"See you tomorrow, Coop, Warren," she said politely as the door shut behind her.

"Nope, we just talked about work. That was it," I told him a little stiffly, not even trying to look where she was going. I suppose I should have been trying to catch a glimpse of her car or something so I could follow her back to where she lived. But the stalker-like visions _that_ brought up quickly made me discard the idea. Not to mention that if I looked like I was the slightest bit interested in her, no matter what the reason, Coop would never let me forget it.

"Huh… So I suppose the office betting pool-."

"Is never going to get won. Sorry," I told him with infinite casualness. Coop just grinned a little.

"Good to know. Dating your co-worker is one thing. Kidnapping your co-worker to be your sex slave is something else. I'm pretty sure there'd be a sexual harassment suit over that. Somehow," he laughed. I just rolled my eyes and went home.

* * *

I considered myself very lucky that while Mom was a morning person, she also tended to leave the house early to go work out. I was not necessarily looking forward to explaining what I was trying to do with Keller. Mom would manage to get it out of me one way or another, especially considering how badly my stomach was in knots. When I finally parked my car though, I realized my luck was out. Mom was waiting for me on the porch.

For about two seconds I debated going to a hotel. Or crashing at one of my friends' houses.

_This is stupid. I'm a superhero, I can face my own mother._

_Yeah, but unlike a supervillain, she'll always get the better of you,_ my brain pointed out.

I got out, squinting in the morning light, knowing that Mom probably already knew what was going on with me. But explaining the details wasn't going to be pleasant. My mother was the most ethical person on the planet, and what I was doing was somewhat less than ethical. I was keeping secrets, harboring a known supervillain, risking her doing something evil for a chance to get information.

"How was work honey?" she asked once I got into earshot. I shrugged expansively, and she followed me into the house.

"Pretty good. Kind of a boring night, which is a good thing," I offered evasively, dropping my bag in the hallway. Mom just closed the distance and gave me a big hug.

"You don't have to say anything, if you don't want to. But I know a boring night shouldn't leave you feeling like you're ready to do battle at any moment," she said, finally letting go. I opened and closed my mouth once, then decided to take Mom at her word. I didn't dare look this gift horse in the mouth, so to speak.

"If I get in over my head, I'll come to you, I promise," I said, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. That was as far as I was willing to acknowledge exactly what I was doing. Mom gave me an odd little look, but thankfully didn't go any farther.

"I'll get you up this afternoon," was all she said, and I nodded, repressing the urge to groan. My friends had to know about the newly discovered quirks of my powers, and I wasn't necessarily looking forward to telling them. I _needed_ them to know, just in case something weird happened to me during a fight. And who knew? Maybe they'd be able to figure out more of why my powers worked the way they did. It was inevitable, because I had graduated first, that they'd have the time to analyze everything I did in the field, which meant I was going to be under more scrutiny than I had been even at Sky High. _That's_ why I was a little uneasy about having to spill even more of my guts. My friends were going to be a lot more careful and critical than Boomer ever had been. Which technically was a good thing. I think.

* * *

I was supposed to be sleeping during the day now, considering I was on third shift, but sleep was not easily forthcoming. The airshow must had been in town, and the planes must have been choosing to fly right over my house to practice, because I kept being jarred awake by sonic booms at irregular intervals. Trixie did _not_ approve, because she was trying to catch some winks as well, and every time I started, she would meow in irritation. So it was a thoroughly irritated me with an equally irritated pet that greeted my friends that afternoon.

"You look terrible Warren!" were the first words out of Layla's mouth when I opened the door.

"Happy Tuesday to you too," I grumped. "I didn't sleep well. Is the airshow in town or something? There were jets flying over my house all morning."

"Umm… that was me, I think," Will offered a little sheepishly, trailing in right behind Layla. "Mom and I were um… doing some flying stuff. Sonic boom tag."

"Right over my damn house?" I demanded. Will looked embarrassed.

"Not on purpose!" he protested. "Seriously, we were all the way over the lake! The sound must have… just… carried…" He trailed off into an awkward silence when my expression didn't soften.

"Right. Trixie, sic 'em!" My cat looked at me, looked at Will, looked back at me, jumped over to Will and took a half-hearted swipe at his nose. Predictably, nothing happened, though Will politely stood there and took it. Then she jumped down and primly groomed her whiskers, balance having been restored in her world. Magenta and Zack had come in right after Will, and were both choking down laughter.

I glared at all four of them, daring them to say anything, and everyone abruptly went into the living room to escape any further fiery or feline fury. Ethan showed up five minutes later, and Mom came out with two things, a tray of lemonade, and the dusty box labeled "Margaret Peace."

I swallowed, a kind of reflexive unease coming over me. It wasn't about this, not necessarily. Mom had promised to do most of the talking, so at least I wasn't going to have to do this on my own. It was what Will had said to me the other day, about pulling a Yellowstone on me again if I started keeping secrets. Right now we were gathered to talk about one of them; yet I had a whopper of one under my belt right now, and I could just imagine their reactions if they knew I was working side-by-side with Painbreaker.

How could I explain to them that I was trying to help? That I was trying to get information on the academy where the Bureau had failed, not once, but several times? That I was impatient with being patient, and wanted to do something _myself?_ Well… actually they probably _would_ understand that, but I doubted they would have approved how I was doing it.

There was also something in the back of my mind, something my uncle Anthony had mentioned to me. That the Bureau would only try me past my strength once, because a single mistake could see me dead. I had told him I wasn't disillusioned with the Bureau yet, but after waiting so long for answers only to have them blocked yet again… Maybe I was a _little_ disillusioned, that I was trying something this reckless. It wasn't that the Bureau had ever asked me to do something I hadn't wanted to, or that they had ever refused anything I had asked them (not that I had asked them for much). But perhaps my uncle had just made me realize I shouldn't take anything for granted. I wasn't going to be an ass about it, but it also didn't mean I could try to do stuff on my own either.

"We finally figured out how Warren's healing powers work," Mom was saying as I shook myself out of my reverie.

"Like how?" Will asked, looking at me curiously.

"When I was fighting Cascade… Tesla, my aunt Lauren, was drowning. Cascade left part of herself behind when she got shocked off," I explained again, a little more thoroughly than I had on Sunday morning. Ethan went a little green at that, probably imagining how it would feel to literally rip part of yourself away. "I was going to go after her and Hydro, but I was…" I paused to think of the right word, " _compelled_ to heal Lauren. The ember-fire wanted me to, and I couldn't make myself do anything but heal her. It was like my powers were in control of me."

Magenta and Ethan were looking at me with sympathy, but not a lot of understanding. Shapeshifters might involuntarily shift from time to time (that was where the legends of werewolves had come from, or so Mrs. Richards had told us), but their powers were usually a lot more controllable than mine. Mental powers like Layla's or my mom's could be more insidious, and people like Will could occasionally have accidents from their powers. Well, Will probably had more accidents than most, but that was also because he was more powerful than any five "average" superheroes put together. But in general it was energy powers that were the most unpredictable. So it wasn't surprising that Zack was the most empathetic.

"I hear you man. Dude, that must have been pretty freaky," he said with a surprising amount of compassion. When I got mad, I burst into flame. When Zack got excited, he started glowing. Different things, but still the same phenomenon. Aside from really extreme situations, most of my friends didn't power up accidentally. Usually. There were quite a few broken doors and banisters in the neighborhood that gave mute testimony to Will forgetting how strong he was, though.

"Yeah… so I Tobias basically told me he had no idea how to deal with what happened. So I called Mom," I said, handing the floor over to her.

"Warren gets his healing power from me. Healers usually tend to be psychics, and it was my family that had the last strong one. That's who Margaret Peace was," she explained, and carefully went over what she had told me about the history and quirks of her great-great grandmother. The gang looked strangely subdued when they listened, and Layla looked particularly stricken near the end.

"That's so sad," she said softly, and Mom nodded.

"You can see why Tobias was so… insistent in warning us once he got rumors of what Warren can do," she said. I gave a short, dark laugh at Mom's word choice of "insistent," but didn't bother to explain to the others.

"So… we need to make sure if we get hurt, to _not_ fall down at Warren's feet in the middle of a fight?" Magenta asked.

"Hey, it's not like I don't _want_ to help you guys, I just want you to know what's going on if I go in a trance," I protested.

"We need to hit you. Got it," she said matter-of-factly, while Zack snickered. I glared at both of them, and Trixie did too, for good measure.

" _Anyway_ ," Mom said, stopping the quips before they could start to get out of hand. "That's all we needed to let you know. And I'm sure you have some more power practice to do before dinner."

I was going to protest with the rest of my friends, seeing as I hadn't had any normal, casual hanging-out time with them for over a week, but Mom gave me a significant look, and I shut my mouth. It probably wasn't going to be the first time that we had little emergency meetings, things going as they did in the superhero world. If I hadn't told them today, luck would happen that they'd need to know it _tonight_. And secure phones or not, I felt a little safer getting them together to talk about it in person. Besides, I think Mom had something she wanted to talk about with me that my friends didn't need to be privy to.

"I'll catch up with you guys later, promise," I said instead, once everyone was done protesting. I dropped a few hints that Mom needed to "talk" with me about something, and got a few sympathetic glances, presuming it was going to be another "worried mother" talk before I went out on my cover job. After a bit more joking around, it was down to the two of us again. Mom waited two breaths after the front door shut before she started talking again, words almost tumbling out of her.

"I haven't seriously spoken to my own family up until two years ago," she said softly. "You know I'm the most powerful of my family, and I had to learn how to control my powers mostly on my own, because everyone else's powers were weaker, or only dealt with a specific emotion. I was also the first of us to work as a public hero. My brother and sister work for the Bureau with traumatized heroes, and that's what my mother did too, until she retired. So I gained our family a lot of inadvertent fame, and then smashed it all into the mud when…" Mom had to stop for a moment. _Hell, no wonder they were pissed,_ I thought. From behind-the-scenes heroes, to relatives of the relatively famous Peacemaker, to being as suspect as she in the fall of Baron Battle… _High to low in the blink of a madman's eye._

"I knew those diaries existed; I had seen that box in the attic when I was younger. And I should have gotten them last September when you first found out about your healing power… But I wasn't ready yet. When you called me last week though, I knew it was time. My mother lives in the next town over, barely twenty minutes away, and I drove right over there and claimed this box. And my mother was so wrought up that we couldn't even speak to each other. This was a crucially important event in both of our lives, and we had so much silence between us that we couldn't even talk normally," she said with a small, involuntary shudder of sorrow.

 _What kind of courage could it take to walk into a house where a blood relative empath could shove their own pain down your throat?_ I thought, my admiration for my mother's bravery raising a notch. Mom was being a little stiff and formal, like she had rehearsed this speech in her head. I had a feeling she had, perhaps several hundred times, just so she could get it out. This must be as hard for her as talking to my friends about my own past had been.

"Thanks for doing that for me," I told her quietly, hugging her hard. She took a few deep breaths in my arms and then hugged me back before pulling away.

"I don't know if we'll ever be able to talk normally again. A lot of it is she's so ashamed at not having spoken to me in so long… It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Thinking of shame and then shame becomes reality. That's why I can't mend fences with them. It's almost better to start over as strangers," she said with a sigh. I really had not idea what to say to that, but then Mom shook her head and stood up.

"I think that's more than enough depressing family history for one day," she said in a slightly brighter tone of voice. And that was all I could get out of her on that for the rest of the day. Not that I tried very hard. I'd be perfectly content to let the Peace family continue to deal with their issues on their own, and not try to complicate it with demanding a familial relationship with them. The very idea of trying to force myself on a bunch of unwilling empaths gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies.

* * *

That night, I barely had time to say hi to Coop before Keller showed up. I wasn't at all willing to talk with her in front of him, mostly because I was afraid I'd let something slip about her identity or mine. And the fact that Coop would cheerfully joke with both of us, and I wasn't in the mood to deal with even friendly joking right now. I'd just end up biting someone's head off. I had had the rest of the afternoon to work myself up to deal with Painbreaker, and I had myself on such an edge I'm sure even an innocent comment would have garnered a truly ridiculous response.

"I have to ask you something, but I'm going to have to violate the terms of our deal," Keller said once we had parked in our sector. She hadn't said a single word to me since we had left the station, and she had startled me again with talking out of the blue. I felt myself clenching my jaw and stopped. The last thing I needed was another stress headache on top of the short sleep.

"Shoot," I said neutrally. Mentally I was prepared do battle again, as Mom had said, to try to extract the real meaning out of anything she said.

"I have… another aspect to my power. I can sense pain, sometimes from up to four blocks away, if it's bad enough. It's almost like seeing color, it's just _there_ unless I make an effort to block it out," she explained. I turned to her with curiosity. "It's how I knew Bloodtalon had tagged Flyboy last fall."

I almost automatically corrected the "Flyboy" remark, but stopped myself. She either already knew it was Will Stronghold, considering that Royal Pain had dated him for a few weeks, or Royal Pain hadn't bothered to tell them just to be mysterious. Either way, it wasn't my job to confirm her information. It was actually my self-appointed job to give her _dis_ information. And she might have purposefully been trying to make me mad and careless by bringing up the Homecoming incident. So I just nodded to show I understood, but held my tongue.

"So, most of the time I know where someone's hurt before we get the call to go there. I can get a jump on any major injury. Assuming you aren't going to haul me in for using my powers," she added.

 _Ok,_ that's _interesting._ It was a practical use of a power that might otherwise only have the option to hurt. _Just like yours,_ my brain added. I abruptly squashed any latent sympathy that thought brought up.

"What do you usually use it for, if you're not doing this?" I asked cautiously.

"My powers don't work unless someone is already hurt," she said simply. "That's why I was partnered with Cutter. She doesn't miss. I knew you hadn't been hurt when she tried to stab you, or you would have been feeling me. That's why the only person I was able to tag was Glowboy."

The temperature in the cabin spiked ten degrees before I wrenched my temper back under control. _Yeah, practical use of her powers… just to get a jump on whom she can torture the worse. When did you become such a bleeding heart, Peace? You've been hanging around Layla too much,_ my brain scolded me.

"If you're trying to get me to feel sympathy for you, you're doing a crappy job," I said, instead of yelling at her like I wanted to. I knew I shouldn't be so snappy, not if I wanted to get any honest information out of her, but it was _hard_ to not want to yell at her for what she had done. She closed her eyes for a second, and something else she had said suddenly penetrated my anger. _"That's why I was partnered with Cutter."_ Was. _Was_ partnered. Did that mean anything? Something? Nothing? Was I overthinking this? _Crap, I am_ not _so great at espionage…_

"Sorry, I got really bad grades in Evil Plots and Schemes. I was much better in Disturbing Glances and Quips," she said after a moment.

"You actually have a Disturbing Glances class?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Tell me you _didn't_ have some kind of Heroic Poses class or something," she said back. Since we _had_ , I didn't even bother to answer, and Keller actually smiled slightly before going back to her usual neutral expression.

"So, about my pain-sensing?" she asked again.

"Fine," I growled. I shouldn't have been so touchy, particularly not if I thought I was going to be able to do any reverse spying. But it was harder than I thought. I was going to have to get inside her head, to a certain extent, and I seriously didn't want to do that.

 _Looks like your plan isn't so brilliant, James Bond,_ my brain reminded me.

 _Shut. Up,_ I told myself sternly.

Several more minutes of silence passed while I tried to figure out what, exactly, I _was_ going to do. "Feeding her false information," was kind of a vague plan, and I wasn't sure what I needed to say or do, precisely, to get that done.

"I didn't have a tragic childhood," Keller said suddenly, startling me again. She was some kind of verbal ninja, to keep surprising me like that, and it was irking me. I shouldn't have kept losing myself in thought.

"Did you have to make one up instead?" I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm down and not succeeding very well. I remembered what she had said about using her "sob story" to win sympathy from heroes, and wondered what she thought she was going to do.

"I suppose I could, if you wanted to hear a tragic story," she offered. I looked at her in annoyance.

"So how does someone with a non-tragic story end up in a supervillain academy?" I asked. If she was going to bend the rules of our little deal by talking about her powers, then I wanted to see if I could get any more information out of her about the academy before she decided to clam up again. She shrugged.

"Ask me, maybe you'll see something I didn't," she suggested. I found it suspicious in the extreme that she was at all willing to talk about herself, but since she had offered, I'd figure I'd ask. If she were going to lie to me, now would be the time to do it. I hadn't been an interrogator before, but I thought I could wing it. _Start with something simple…_

"Were your parents supervillains?" That was the most obvious question, and one I thought I already knew the answer to. Principal Powers had said she was probably a first-generation power, considering her age compared to the others.

"No, they were normal, as far I as I knew. I never met them," she said.

"Adopted?"

"No. My father was from Delhi. He came to America to go to college, and got a scholarship to Stanford. He met my mother there, and they were married right out of college. She got pregnant; he died in a car crash two months later. Mom died in childbirth, and her mother raised me."

"No grandfather?" I asked.

"No, he died sometime in the early seventies, industrial accident," she replied. So far, she was being truthful, but her story still seemed very odd.

"So, your grandmother?"

"She was wonderful, and I loved her very much."

"What happened to her?"

"She died when I was fourteen, about six months after I powered up the first time, pancreatic cancer. It was fast, at least," she said with a fatalistic shrug. "After that I was in foster care. Good people, fair, nice. I never had any problems with them."

This was not exactly the mental portrait I had of a supervillain's childhood. Where were the mean guaridans or foster parents, cruel punishments, the mutilated animals in the back alley, bullying or being bullied by other kids, or experimenting with their powers for fun and profit? I had the uncanny sensation she was telling the truth, which was rather disconcerting, considering how had expected things to go. Either she was lying, which I didn't think she was, she was leaving things out, or I wasn't asking the right questions. _Right, next most obvious thing then._

"What about school?"

"I skipped the second grade in elementary school, and took some college courses in my senior year of high school and some other night classes at the local community college, and was able to double up to get through college in two years instead of four to save money," she said quickly, as if she had anticipated my questions. _Ok, so she was smart, or at least dedicated. And not overly rich, if she had to cram that much into two years. No scholarships apparently. When would she have had the_ time _to be a villain if she was taking that many classes? All right, next big question._ And the one closest to the bone for me.

"People ever pick on you?"

"I was a little younger than most, but I had a few friends. I mostly kept to myself, kept out of peoples' way, and they didn't bother me. Read a lot, won the spelling bee a few times when I was younger, wrote a little in high school and college for the school paper. Medical stuff mostly, about volunteering."

"Why that?"

"After I powered up… I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. I learned a lot of what I could from books. I kind of figured out I needed to be around people in pain to avoid backlash, so I volunteered at the local hospital. I worked as a nurse's aide to help pay the bills while I was in college. Then I was a pain therapist for about a year and a half, before I was recruited," she said, and opened her eyes.

"Pain therapist?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. _Backlash? What exactly is she talking about?_ I filed that away for future reference. I didn't want to get too sidetracked.

"The irony is staggering, I know," she said with a small smile.

It was strange, but I had been expecting something far worse, a violent boyfriend, or witnessing some terrible tragedy, or _something_ to help explain why she would want to go to the academy. She didn't exactly have the kind of warm and fuzzy home life most of my friends had had, and most of the rest of it seemed, quiet honestly, boring. It sounded like she had led a pretty quiet life, powers not withstanding. Right up until she had decided to become a supervillain. Something wasn't adding up.

"So, what about you?" she asked.

"What _about_ me?" I said.

"I told you something about me. What about you? Quid pro quo."

"We are so _not_ doing Silence of the Lambs," I snapped in exasperation. She looked at me measuringly.

"Well, I guess you're no Clarice Starling," she said with a hint of a smile.

"And you're definitely no Hannibal Lecter," I shot back. She snorted.

"Cutter said that to me once. She said I was a great female Hannibal Lecter."

"And you don't agree with her?"

"Since he was elegant, suave, and a cannibal, no, I don't think so. Besides, she's crazy, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to her opinions."

"So if she's crazy, what does that make you?"

"Crazy people don't know they're crazy. I was considering exactly how crazy I was, then I realized that if I was wondering if I was crazy, I probably wasn't," she said carefully.

"I think there's a flaw in your logic."

"Right, people shouldn't try to assess their own sanity?" she asked.

"Sure, fine, that sounds about right," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Don't be coy. If you think I'm insane, say so!"

"I… really don't know. I honestly have no idea why someone would want to be a supervillain," I told her, surprising myself a little. I didn't _think_ she was insane, at least not right now, but I still couldn't reconcile her history with what I had seen of her in action. Keller started and looked sharply at me.

"So saying someone is insane is easier than understanding their own reasons for being a supervillain?" she asked a little harshly.

"What, you want my good opinion?" I asked, confused.

"Yes," she said simply.

 _What… the… fuck?_ I thought slowly. _Ok, this is some kind of elaborate mind game. It has to be._

"Why?" I demanded.

"I don't want to spent forty hours a week with someone that hates me," she said.

"You hurt my fr- teammates," I said, stopping myself from saying "friends" at the last second. She didn't need any more weapons against me than she already had.

"You hurt mine," she responded, raising an eyebrow.

"Why the hell did you go to the academy?" I demanded, not daring to answer her last comment.

"Because Royal Pain asked me," she said simply.

 _Why the hell did someone who led a relatively boring existence up until recently decide to be a supervillain? How did Royal Pain convince her?_ I had been a little uncertain about how exactly I was going to do my grand spy plan, and had been more uncertain with each passing comment. But suddenly I had a plan. Somehow Royal Pain had managed to find and convince a relatively ignorant superpower with little to no villainous ambitions to join her academy. Presumably she was doing the same to others, by proxy of whoever was running the academy now.

If I could figure out how someone like Keller has been picked and convinced, maybe we could intercept her next potential student. It was a long shot, I realized, but unless I could find someway to crack Painbreaker to giving me the keys to the academy doors, _this_ was the next best way in. I could feed her false information on the heroes of Maxville until my tongue fell off, but this could be even better. What we needed was a _person_ inside that academy, someone that could actually talk to the teachers, see the classes, and speak with the students without the fear of being unmasked. If I could find out who that next student was, maybe I could stop a villain from being born, or even save some of the others.


	30. Senseless

This made no sense. None at all. Not the tiniest bit. Why should she tell me the truth? Everything she said I could use against her. The reverse was true as well, but I hadn't said anything about me. At least, not directly. But how in the world did she think that giving me part of her history was going to help _her?_ I was extremely confused, and could only think of one way of dealing with it right now. Shut the hell up. I needed time to think, and think _hard_ about what I thought I was doing.

I had put a lot of faith in Mom's lessons on how to read people, but right now I was so weirded out that I didn't know what to believe. Was Keller better at lying than I was at detecting a lie? I wasn't infallible, though most people weren't used to hiding information from someone with my training. Was I arrogantly assuming I could guess what she was really up to? I bet she had plenty of practice in hiding her true intentions at the academy. I mean, I hadn't figured out Gwen was Royal Pain until everyone else at school. Yeah, I definitely needed the time off.

She lapsed into silence again along with me, and we both sat, wrapped in our own thoughts for at least another half hour. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Why did you tell me the truth?" I asked her. I noticed I hadn't managed to startle her like she had me at least a half-dozen times, and that irked me.

"I'm not a terribly good liar. And you're not so much of a fool that you couldn't figure out the truth with a bit of hunting. I figured I'd spare you the time and me the recriminations," she said.

I wanted to ask more obvious questions, like why she was giving me information I could use against her, why she had said she _was_ partnered with Cutter, or what backlash was. But I was a little worried about what she might say. Too much truth could be as confusing as too many lies. Before I could formulate a question though, I was saved by the bell. Literally. My emergency phone started ringing.

The ring was the same as my normal phone, but I knew my normal phone was on my belt, whilst the emergency phone was in an inner pocket of my vest. I was reluctant to answer it in front of Keller. Scratch that. Actually I was pretty sure there were _rules_ somewhere about answering your emergency phone in front of a known supervillain.

"Aren't you going to answer that, _hero?_ " she asked a touch sarcastically. "They might be calling about me."

 _Welcome to the Twilight Zone…_ my brain said softly. She already knew I was Phoenix, of course. She had seen me with no mask, using my powers, if she hadn't already known about me from studying my dad. There weren't two pyrokinetics of my age and build that could have come on the scene so recently, and certainly none that would have been working with Fire Court. And, most blindingly obvious, none that would have claimed to be the son of the Red Knight. I didn't have time to argue with her to go somewhere else, and going outside to answer was almost as reckless as talking in front of her. I chose the lesser and more well known of the two evils and pulled out the phone.

"Go," I said quickly, staring at her almost defiantly.

"Phoenix, we have a burning office building on Main and Tenth, the fourth floor. We think the blaze was set by Flashpoint!"

"I'm on it," I said, and snapped the phone shut. The ambulance was parked only four blocks away from where I needed to be; I could run there quickly enough. It might not be as cool as Fire Court's jet or Will's flying, but until I managed to get a Phoenix-mobile or something, I was stuck with hoofing it or commandeering the ambulance. That _had_ been my plan until I saw who my partner was. At least the Bureau knew I was a little constrained in where I could feasibly go.

 _Chhk "657, call to Main and Tenth, possible burn victim from building fire, respond,"_ the radio crackled to life in a burst of static, Coop calling out the number of our ambulance. Keller stared at me, and I nodded tightly, confirming that's where I was going.

"657, on the way," she responded, and started up the bus. I flipped on the lights and sirens as we pulled out of the parking lot, trying to surreptitiously fumble for the bag that held my helmet and gauntlets with the other hand. I had on most of my costume under my clothes, but I still had to change before confronting Flashpoint.

"I'll pull around back," Keller said shortly as we rounded a corner. "You just make sure you're back down here to drive before people get suspicious."

The weirdness was going a little too fast for me, but I didn't have time to argue. Undoubtedly my guts would be tying themselves in complicated sailor's knots once I stopped to think about the implications of what I was doing (and what _she_ was doing), but not now. Keller whipped the ambulance down the alley behind the smoky burning building, slowing just enough to let me roll out the doors before zipping around to the front. Shoving my unease at Keller aside, I quick-changed as I rolled, and sprang up, shouldering open the fire door as I went. Most of these were supposed to open automatically when the alarm tripped, which was good for me. I was strong, but not nearly strong enough to rip open a locked metal safety door.

 _Fourth story, why the hell did Flashpoint have to choose the fourth story office?_ I groused mentally as I ran up the stairs into the smoky air.

There were two types of supervillains I was most likely to face, ones with cold powers, for obvious reasons, and ones with fire powers, because I was immune to what they could do to me. I made sure I had most of them memorized before I graduated.

Flashpoint was a pyrokinetic, though a little different than me. His powers were limited to short, intense bursts, and he couldn't stay powered up for longer periods of time like I could. He was, first and foremost, an arsonist. Secondarily, he was a thief and blackmailer, taking what secrets and goodies he could, burning everything else, and then calling the owners to pay for their things back.

It was his greed that kept him from being a deadly menace, because he generally preferred to burn buildings to people. It wouldn't stop him burning someone so he could escape, and if someone didn't get out of a building he burned, that was just too damn bad, in his mind. I could only be grateful he had chosen to burn the place at night, when there were less people around. Luckily his greed and desire not to be caught were stronger than his need to set things on fire, at least tonight. I only hoped I could get him under control before he managed to burn anyone else.

The smoke was getting thicker with each flight of stairs, and I grabbed one of the oxygen caplets from my belt and slid it in between my cheek and gum in case I needed it, silently blessing Nurse Spex for suggesting them. Hell of a thing for me to collapse from smoke inhalation inside a burning building. I would lose far too many cool points that way.

The fourth floor stairwell was open, flames licking a few of the walls, smoke filling the air, the lurid red and orange of the flames providing the only light. The cloth-walled cubicles of the office inside were filled with paper, and the place was going up fast. I paused for a moment and _listened_ , trying to hunt for the sounds of groaning floorboards or shifting ceiling beams. Being indestructible, in theory I could survive a four-story fall and walk away. In reality, I better not test that unless I had to.

There were no dangerous sounds from the structure itself, but I heard two other things. One was slightly hysterical laughter, coming from deeper in the burning office. The other was a very faint muffled voice, coming from a closet further down the hall. I slid in quietly, checking all around for signs of Flashpoint. I hoped he was the source of the laughter, because if he had minions lurking around…

I was suddenly very much aware of the fact that I was alone. I had no backup, no one checking the left while I check the right. It should have been second nature really, considering how I had grown up, but having concerned friends had kind of made me lose that slightly paranoid edge I had developed as a survival trait as a kid. Boomer had trained me pretty well, but I still had a brief moment of panic.

 _Calm, be cool…_ I told myself firmly, and slid quietly down to the door. _Check the doorknob. It's cool, all right, no more fire in here._ I opened it, and saw a figure huddled up on the floor. The guy wore the coverall of a janitor and a very frightened expression. His eyes got huge when he saw my costume, and I kicked myself mentally. I had made that costume for intimidation purposes, and for a guy that had been trapped by a fire I must look a little more than simply intimidating.

"I'm Phoenix, I'm here to help," I told him quietly. The guy stared at me for a second, coughed, and finally started breathing normally again. "Flashpoint, where is he?" I asked urgently.

The guy blinked in confusion, and waved vaguely to the left, where I had heard the laughter.

"Ok, can you make it to the stairs? The way's clear," I told him, pointing back the way I had come. He nodded vaguely, and I stood up. "It'll be all right, I promise. Just be careful, I'll be back soon."

"Carl," he coughed. "The night guard. I saw him get burned. He ran down the front stairs… I hid in here."

"The ambulance is already here for him," I told him. _That must have been who Coop called us for._ He stood slowly, looking relieved at what I had told him, and began to walk towards the stairs with a somewhat unsteady gait, holding on to the wall for support. I figured I better deal with Flashpoint quickly before the guy accidentally pitched down the stairwell and broke something.

I kept easing forward, keeping to the walls, listening for more of the deranged laughter I had heard earlier. Somewhere in the distance I heard the horns and sirens of firetrucks, and knew Flashpoint was going to have to make a break for it soon if he wanted to get out of here. The laughter abruptly cut off as the owner heard the sirens, and I stepped around the corner.

A tall and wiry man in a garish yellow costume was standing in the middle of the office, sending jets of flame into computers, walls, and the ceiling. I had no idea why the sprinkler system wasn't going off; maybe he had found a way to bypass it so his "fun" wouldn't be ruined. Apparently these last few bursts of flame were for the road, because he began to turn in my direction, shouldering a bag of loot as he went.

"Going somewhere?" I growled at him. Flashpoint abruptly snapped his mouth shut, and then smirked.

"Who're you?" he demanded, casually hitching his bag higher on his shoulder.

"Phoenix."

"Never heard of you. The mayor has got to be getting senile, sending fire to fight fire," he said with a laugh, sending another jet of flame flashing right by my face to see if I'd flinch. I held my ground, but refrained from powering up. We didn't need any more fire in this room, not by a long shot.

"I don't need my powers to stop you," I said, dropping into a fighting stance.

"I don't either," Flashpoint said arrogantly, and pulled something out of the bag at his side, a heavy, black tire iron, simple, reasonably melt-proof, and quite decidedly painful to be hit by. Not exactly thematically appropriate, but pretty efficient!

 _Oops_ , I though faintly, and ducked under his swing as he lunged. I came up with an uppercut, barely grazing him as he twisted aside, and he came around with amazing speed, connecting hard with my upper arm, cracking the armor plates and the bone beneath. Pain exploded, and I ducked and rolled on my good side around the corner.

 _"Boomer really overtrains us." "Those guys are clowns." Hubris, hubris, hubris! You arrogant ass! Look, every other supervillain you've faced, you've faced with help! Well, there's no one to watch your back right now, so you play this carefully or you're going to end up seriously screwed!_ my brain yelled, giving me what I'm sure it considered a rousing pep talk. In the interim, the rest of me was pressed up against a wall, holding my arm while the last of the pain faded. The sensation of having my arm break and then heal within instants of each other was a seriously unpleasant feeling, and I choked back bile as it finally snapped into place. Indestructibility was not always a comfortable power to have.

It wasn't like this hadn't ever happened before. In the cafeteria fight with Will, I was very certain I had broken several bones going through those two walls, but at that point I had been so angry I had been ignoring everything. Right now, I was more afraid than angry. I could see the janitor had collapsed in the hallway, and while I was still between Flashpoint and this exit, I knew the supervillain wouldn't hesitate to get rid of any witnesses, if he saw the janitor was there.

 _Pull it together, come on…_ I told myself, and took a few deep breaths of the smoky air. I crunched the oxygen caplet to clear my head, and then ducked frantically as Flashpoint slammed the tire iron around the corner, nearly cracking my skull.

"Come on birdie, you gonna fight, or are you gonna run?" Flashpoint asked, striding around the corner, tire iron held like a baseball bat. I was glad my helmet hid my eyes as I glanced over to the guy on the floor. _He expects me to make a stand over the citizen… So do the unexpected. You know you can take it._ _This is just like Save the Citizen, the hero who waits, loses._

"Fight," I said simply. This time _I_ lunged, going low, tackling the guy around the waist, and ignoring the glancing blow across my back. We crashed to the floor, and I heard an ominous rumble beneath us. The fire must have been starting to weaken the floor, and now we were both running out of time. Panic crossed his face, and he tried to roll away, but I had his legs pinned. Unfortunately that left his arms free, and he struck me hard across the face before I could block. My vision went red with pain and blood, the blow only partially deflected by my helmet.

Snarling, I blinked my eyes clear and punched him hard in the face. Flashpoint collapsed under me, apparently unconscious, and I got up, watching him warily. I was unsurprised when he began to twist sideways, having faked being knocked out, and decided that I was uninterested in playing around.

"Unless you want a boot to the head, drop it now," I growled. Flashpoint considered that for one second, dropped the tire iron… and let loose with a blast of fire right past me to hit the guy on the floor. _That bastard, he was just trying to get me out of the way!_ I roared in anger and made good my threat. The kick landed Flashpoint a good ten feet away, crumpled against the wall, bleeding from the nose, with a spectacular bruise forming on his jaw. I whipped around to the janitor, and saw a half-dozen startled firefighters in the stairwell door, wrestling with a hose. Two had already rushed forward to pat out the guy's clothes, and the others had been about ready to start doing something about the blaze when they had caught sight of Flashpoint and I.

"He's getting away!" one of them yelled, pointing behind me. I whirled again to catch sight of Flashpoint staggering up and pelting through the burning office. _Damn it, what does it take to knock this guy out?_ I thought with irritation, and ran after him. I hoped the firefighters had the janitor well in hand, because I wasn't going to let this guy get away, not after that. Hissing and steam behind me told me the hoses had started going, and I heard some startling groans coming from the floor.

Ahead of me, I saw Flashpoint vanish through an exit door, a mirror to the one on the opposite side of the building. I ran straight for it, but then, with a sickening crunch, the floor gave way underneath me, and I was falling through space. I landed hard and was pelted with burning wood and chunks of smoking plaster, my legs half-pinned under all the rubble. I hauled myself free with a painful jerk, hurtled the remaining pile of debris, and dashed for the stairwell. Flashpoint was a story below me and going fast.

 _I'm not going to catch him!_ I thought angrily, hurling myself between the landings, trying to roll with the impact of each jump. I heard the exit door thump open when I still had two flights of stairs to go, and nearly tripped trying to get down them in time. I had just barely gotten to the bottom and thrown open the door when I heard the squealing of tires. I got outside just to see the receding taillights of what had to be Flashpoint's getaway car.

 _"Damn it!"_ I swore, one flaming fist slamming into a nearby dumpster in my frustration. _That was fucking brilliant, you moron! Didn't stop the fire, didn't stop the villain, didn't stop him from stealing…_

 _I did save the citizen though,_ I reminded myself, and took two deep breaths to get calm. _No time to rest on your laurels, gotta change and get back out front. You still have work to do._ I shoved aside my attitude and quick-changed back into my civilian gear, swiftly walking back out front like I belonged there. A slightly harried Keller was holding an oxygen mask to an older, portly guy in a security guard's uniform, while he held a cold pack to his hand.

"Peace! Come on, it looks like the firefighters already found the other victim. They're bringing him down now," she called, as if my late appearance was totally expected. I felt a little grateful that she had calmly come up with an alibi, considering I didn't have one handy. My half-failure in my fight with Flashpoint had driven such mundane considerations out of my head. I brought myself back to the here and now, helping Keller check over the guard (who was indeed named Carl), and finding him to be only lightly scorched and suffering from a mild case of smoke inhalation. It was his buddy, the janitor Marco, who was much worse off.

When the firefighters finally got him down, the man was totally unconscious from spending so much time in the smoke, and burnt badly on his back from Flashpoint's fire blast. Carl stepped aside immediately, insisting he'd go to the emergency room on his own, letting us give our full attention to Marco. I could feel a faint wrongness about him, enough to let me know the man was in danger, but I was still able to control the ember-fire. He wasn't in mortal danger, yet.

"You drive," Keller said, after we had strapped him in and loaded him up. I didn't argue, though this was the first time I had had the occasion to drive during an emergency. Concentrating on the road would help me keep control. Beneath the sounds of the sirens and engines, I could hear the faint sounds of Keller hanging the IV, checking his blood pressure, turning on the oxygen, and talking quietly to him to try to get him to regain consciousness.

I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye, but she didn't lay a finger on him that she didn't need to, nor did I hear anything out of him that would make me think she was using her powers. He didn't wake up before we got him to the ER and let the doctors take over, but the pull on my wasn't any stronger than it had been before, so I was pretty confident he'd be ok. It was the only real consolation from that night, that he had been rescued.

We had parked again and were filling out paperwork when Keller started up again.

"You really took a beating up there," she commented idly. I blinked at her in non-comprehension.

"He broke your bones, didn't he? At least, briefly," she clarified.

"Yeah… you could tell that?" I asked, trying to not have a very quiet freak-out in the driver's seat.

"Very much so. I only really do one thing, and I do it very well," she said with a kind of odd pride.

 _Ok, that will be quite enough weirdness for one night, thank you very much and goodbye,_ my brain said firmly. I finally decided to follow my own advice for once, and didn't say anything else the rest of the shift.

Keller didn't press for any further details, and, as expected, my gut promptly tied itself into a sheepshank knot in reaction to everything. _Too much possible truth, too many unanswered questions, too much you need to know but are too weirded out to ask._

Half-losing to Flashpoint had thrown me for a loop, and Keller's bizarre comments hadn't helped any. I was tapped out with clever ideas, clever comments, or even coherent speech.

It was a very long night.

* * *

It was decidedly strange to drive home in the morning just to go to bed, but I hadn't lied when I told Coop I was a night owl by preference. It hadn't been too hard to adjust to being basically nocturnal, but my friends were still getting the hang of the fact that I wasn't fit company until mid-afternoon at the earliest. I also had to forcibly remind myself that I couldn't call any of them at seven a.m. and expect to get a reasonable answer.

Mom, on the other hand, was being very quiet about everything. She had given me a big hug the moment I had come in the door, nearly squeezing the breath out of me, and then had just walked out the door to take her morning jog. If I hadn't known better, I might have started to become paranoid about all the weird things going on. I guessed Mom was just trying to give me the space to make my own mistakes and triumphs as a superhero on my own. I wasn't sure if I appreciated that or resented it, particularly because she couldn't help but know I was not having the easiest time of it. But I had to talk to someone about what had happened tonight (or at least part of it), and the only person I really could talk to was Will.

I ended up being polite and waited until nine to call. Will was our group leader, and like it or not, I had to tell him how the fight with Flashpoint had gone. I was keeping back several secrets from him and the rest of my friends, but I wouldn't hold this back, no matter how painful or embarrassing it was. I owed him that much. Will would have to know what I could handle, and what problems might come up in any fight. And no matter how many films of superbattles we watched, or how many books we read, there was no substitute for practical experience. Besides, he couldn't be a very confident leader if I kept lording my own experience over him. He needed the knowledge, and right then, I needed a friendly ear.

"Warren? What time is it?" Will answered his phone with a yawn.

"Nine a.m. Rise and shine Stronghold."

"What's up? Something going on?" he asked, his brain starting to kick into gear when he realized that I had willingly called him. The last time I had done that my grandfather had dropped by to visit.

"You know when I said Boomer overtrains us and supervillains are mostly clowns? If I ever say that again, hit me," I told him.

"Ow… bad night?" he asked.

"Yeah, Flashpoint burned at least two floors of a building and managed to get away scott free. I managed to keep him from killing a citizen, barely, but that was it…" I gave him a quick run-down of my fight, not really sparing myself at all. It was slightly masochistic to be telling my best friend how badly I had screwed up, but also a relief at the same time.

"Man…" Will said finally after I was done. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, I didn't call for sympathy. If I wanted that, I'd talk to your girlfriend."

Will laughed at that.

"Look, I was… I just wanted to…" I trailed off, trying to find the right words.

"Tell us not to get cocky?" Will finished.

"Yeah. I kind of realized a little too late that I'm too used to having someone watch my back. I need to get my head back into the game." Will paused for a moment at my comment, thinking, and then finally sighed.

"So you wanna do more training stuff?" he asked finally.

"Wow, you sound so enthused Stronghold. Come on, you knew we were going to have to anyway."

"It's summer! I wanted a _little_ time off," Will protested.

"Evil knows no season, Wonderboy."

"Oh man, _don't_ call me that in front of my dad. He's still trying to help me pick out my name."

"What? That's a perfectly respectable… lame superhero name," I joked.

"If you want me to hit you, you're doing a great job," he warned, but I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

"All I'm saying is that since we were going to have to practice anyway, let's not wait. Magenta said we could use her family farm, right?" I asked. Will groaned at the loss of his summer free time. "Hey, remember you're supposed to save the world three times over the week after you graduate."

"Yeah, right. Ok, ok, I'll get something set up, promise," Will said, and we both hung up. But not before I heard someone say, "I'll call Magenta-," right before the line went dead. And it wasn't Will's voice, it was Layla's. The implications of what the two of them were doing together at nine a.m. when Will was still (supposedly) asleep… I quickly resolved not to say anything unless I had to. I apparently wasn't the only one keeping secrets.

* * *

We ended up meeting at least three or four days during the week during most of the summer, taking over a pasture on Magenta's family farm to practice. Layla had a terribly unfair advantage, at least compared to our Gauntlet runs at school, because she had a lot more plants to work with. _I_ had to be careful, because if I managed to burn down a field or outbuilding or something, the Pattersons were going to be very put out. Ethan managed to get sucked down an old pipe twice, which meant Magenta had to go in and find him, though inadvertently he found out exactly how small of a crack he could fit through while melted. The answer, very small indeed.

Though by necessity a lot more random and free form than our Gauntlet runs, our summer sessions were plenty useful. My not-quite loss to Flashpoint had given me a slight edge of paranoia to not have a repeat, and my friends were more than willing to help both me and them out. We tried going two-or-three on one as a start.

Unsurprisingly, Will was the best at it, but even Layla beat me out for second place. Being able to control all the plants in a huge honking radius around you pretty much meant no one could touch you. I could burn through them, sure, but all Layla had to do was pile on the plantlife, like she had with Skybolt, and soon I ended up too muffled to power up. Annoying? Yes. But since Layla was maybe the least physical person in our group, it was comforting to know she could hold back nearly anyone.

Magenta was obviously doing really well with whatever she was learning from her sensei, because she was dodging our attacks with a lot more coordination and grace than ever before.

"Yeah, I'm learning Guinea Pig Kung Fu," she had said proudly when Will asked her about it. I shouldn't have snickered. I knew I shouldn't have. I didn't need the look of doom from Zack or the glare from Magenta to know I had screwed up. But seriously… guinea pig kung fu!

"Ok Mr. Phoenix Fancy-Pants, if I can put you on your back first, you can never laugh at that again. If you manage to take me down first, then you can laugh all you like," she said challengingly.

"I do _not_ have fancy pants," was all I said back to her, but dropped into my fighting stance anyway. I wouldn't have laughed at it again anyway, but I was certainly willing to spar with her. I had nearly six inches of height on her, weighed more, was stronger, and had been training myself how to fight for eight years. Guinea pig kung fu aside, I didn't want _her_ to get too cocky about her fighting style. Some people, you teach them a few kicks and they think they're some Shaolin monk from a martial arts epic. And I didn't want Magenta to be amongst them.

I waited for her to make the first move, hoping to make her overextend so I could end this quickly. I didn't want to humiliate her, not after I had laughed at her, but I wasn't going to take a fall either. She leapt in quickly, making small, darting movements with her hands. I waited a breath for her to get just a hair closer, and then sprang at her, poised to grab her arm and send her tumbling… Then she wasn't there! I had just enough wit to realize she had shifted (and she had gotten a _lot_ faster with her shifting) before she skittered just behind my foot, unshifted, and tripped me with a sweep of her leg.

I lay on the ground for two breaths before getting up.

"Guinea Pig Kung Fu," I told her with great solemnity. "Seriously, I didn't mean to laugh."

"I know. But I just wanted to see if it would work," she said with a little smile.

"Right, you're a kung fu genius. Come on, I think Zack's next."

"Bring it on guys! The Zack Attack will take all comers!"

Yeah, that was how I spent _my_ summer non-vacation.

* * *

Working with Keller became less odd as the summer went on. After those two days of peculiar confessions in June, she had finally kept to our original deal to not mention our oddities unless necessary. That was bad for my grandiose master plan, of course, but after having gotten a little more seeming-truth than I had bargained for, I had opted for a slightly more subtle approach for the time being; I could return to the more personal stuff when I was certain I could read her better. I simply paid attention to her; specifically what she paid attention to. When we occasionally made small talk about normal things like current news, I made careful mental notes about what she talked about or seemed interested in.

While a little tedious, I realized after a couple of weeks that I was actually getting somewhere. From what she talked about, it seemed like she was getting information on how fast and how often heroes responded to their calls, how often villains were captured versus escaped, and how much damage they did. That only made sense, when I thought about it, so I began my own counter-campaign of disinformation. I couldn't help the fact that she had my evidence right in front of her, but I would casually mention mostly fictitious battles, some modified from The Illustrated Lives of Superheroes, the facts carefully altered to make the heroes seem a little slower and less competent than they were. All of those times we had helped Ethan prepare for a Champion Debate tournament really helped there.

Principal Powers had mentioned the need to make the academy complacent, and if they thought the superheroes were less diligent than they actually were, then the villains might be slower to leave the scene of a crime, or more careless about how they did things. The fact that I was a known hero actually worked for me, because I might conceivably know facts left out of the public records. Just saying someone had one more loss than they did, or let the villain get away that one time… It wasn't a masterful deception, but Keller didn't seem to disbelieve me when I "corrected" the occasional factoid from the news.

There were still weird moments though. I still got my emergency calls, and she would occasionally drive me to the area. A few times she helped me with my alibi, and even covered for me once when Coop had called and I hadn't been there. This odd way of helping didn't make me feel any easier about working with her, but I didn't think I could afford to shove away her help. If she thought I trusted her, maybe she would be more inclined to believe my "inside information." I didn't even notice her using her powers at all, aside from the pain sensing that occasionally let us beat the call to the scene of an accident.

Twice it had even let me know a supervillain was in the area before my emergency phone rang. Apparently there was no honor amongst supervillains, at least those not from the academy, and Keller was supremely unconcerned that she had led me to foiling the schemes of her "peers." I had been tempted to ask her about that, but decided I wasn't quite ready to broach into personal stuff yet. Training with my friends had helped me get my edge for one-on-one stuff back, and while I wasn't exactly kicking major butt every night, I was certainly putting a serious crimp in the criminal lifestyle in Maxville.

Keller and I were in a wary kind of working relationship by early August. While I didn't trust her motives, she was an entirely competent EMT. I don't know how much she trusted me, but she never hesitated to help in the job. I had been very lucky so far in that while we had seen some bad injuries, even life-threatening ones, I hadn't let the ember-fire get away from me yet.

It was hard, even headache-inducing to hold it back, but I had been working very hard on my concentration and control to keep it under wraps. My friends thought it was just so I wouldn't zonk out in a fight. That was true as far as that went, but I definitely didn't want to give Keller a demonstration. I sometimes got very absent when I was trying to keep it inside, but I noticed she also got oddly quiet during some of the same cases. I figured her powers had something to do with it, but wasn't about to ask her, not then. But the third week of August both of those came to a head.

* * *

Keller sucked in an audible breath, and I glanced over sharply at her. She had gone rigid in her seat for a moment, and was staring at some middle distance.

"Keller?" I asked quietly, recognizing the symptoms her using her pain-sensing powers.

"Car wreck, three blocks away, someone's hurt pretty bad," she said simply, and reached over to turn on the ambulance while I hit the lights and sirens. Keller was still the better driver of the two of us, not to mention the fact that I occasionally had to leave at irregular intervals. It was simpler to let her drive, particularly because her pain-sensing would lead her like a beacon.

It was indeed a car wreck, a truly terrible one. The car had jumped the median and plowed head-on into a lamppost; at this time of night the driver being drunk was probably the reason. The driver had somehow managed to get out and was gone by the time we had gotten there, but there was a deathly pale blonde teenaged girl still trapped in the passenger seat. By the way the front of the car had crumpled, her legs were totally pinned, possibly crushed.

I hoped one of the few bystanders had called the fire department, because we were going to need the Jaws of Life to get her out. Right now I seriously wished I had Will's super strength, because the girl was screaming in agony at the top of her lungs. Her face had small, bloody cuts on it from fragments of flying glass and metal, and crumbs of safety glass covered her clothes and hair. Thankfully she had been wearing her seatbelt, or I was sure she would have been thrown from the car.

She was deathly pale under the blood from her cuts, but at least she was definitely conscious and breathing, due to the impressive amount of screaming filling the air.

"Calm down ma'am, we're EMTs, we're here to help," I tried to tell her from the passenger side, as Keller leaned in next to me to try to check her over for other injuries. I didn't know if the girl was bleeding underneath the crumpled metal, if her legs were intact, broken, or even severed. We didn't dare give her anything for the pain here; we didn't know if she was allergic, or how her body might react, considering that she was probably in shock to boot.

The screaming continued unabated, and she struck out at us in a frenzy of hysteria. Coop had told us that people with bad injuries could act entirely crazy, and we both ducked reflexively as her wild blows banged against the doorframe. I grabbed her arms and held her still so she wouldn't manage to break her arms on top of everything else, and prayed fervently for the firetrucks to get here.

I was also praying they'd get here _soon_. I was holding onto control of my powers so hard I was giving myself a migraine. The girl wasn't quite dying, not yet, but she wasn't going to last much longer, not as bad at the car looked. This was the worst injury I had seen in my short tenure in this job. I obviously didn't dare heal her in public, not just because of the threat to my identity or because Keller was there, but because I didn't know what would happen if I tried to heal a broken leg while it was still out of alignment. Her legs couldn't possibly be in one piece under all that metal.

The girl stopped fighting after a second, and I took the opportunity to grab Keller's collar so I could talk right into her ear; no one could hear us over the screaming.

"Can you block this?" I asked harshly. She looked at me as if I were insane.

"Can you absorb fire as well as make it?" she shot back. I didn't let up; if she could do something to get the girl quiet, I might be able to keep control long enough to get her cut out of the car. Right now the pain-filled screams were nearly killing me, because I knew she wasn't just screaming out of fear. She was dying and she knew it.

"Can you do _anything?_ " I demanded, as the girl's screams reached a new pitch. Mental powers were the most flexible of all the power families. Most people with those abilities could reverse their powers. Like Zoë, she could lift things up or hold things down, throw things, or protect people from flying projectiles. Elise could read minds, or prevent them from being read; Justin could reverse his own psisicking. Layla could even, in theory, sicken or even kill plants as well as making them grow, but it would probably take some evil botanopath doing something particularly twisted to the plant kingdom to get her to use _that_ aspect of her power. My own abilities were a borderline case because they were tied so closely to my pyrokinesis.

Keller looked at her, looked back at me, and then reached out and put her hand on the girl's wrist. Keller looked out at some middle distance, her brow furrowed in concentration, and then her eyes abruptly unfocused. The girl's screams cut off so suddenly that for a terrifying moment I thought she had died. But when I looked back at her, she had a transcendently profound look of relief on her face. Keller looked startled, like she wasn't sure what exactly she had done, and I took the opportunity to shove the ember-fire inside mentally. It wasn't going to be denied though, and I had a sinking feeling I was going to lose this fight. Right now I just had to hang on until we were out of the public eye.

Thankfully, the firetrucks arrived less than a minute later, and the gathered crowd parted to let through the laden crew. We threw blankets over the passenger as they worked with the Jaws, trying to check her over for any other injuries, now that she was being quiet and wasn't fighting us. All of this was simple training, because my own healing abilities were maddeningly vague when it came down to figuring out exactly what was wrong. Something like Magenta's poisoning or Will's cold I saw as a uniform shadow, while Lauren's near drowning came to my mind as a shadow somewhere in the middle of the fire. Yeah, specificity was not my strong suit, even if I dared invoke my powers in public.

"Left leg is bent backwards at the knee, not quite an open dislocation of the tibia, but close. Right has tibia, fibula, and femur all broken in multiple places, compound fractures with heavy bleeding. Upper body is all right, but we need to watch for crush syndrome when they get this opened up," Keller said in a low voice. I looked at her oddly.

"You can… feel it that well?" I asked.

"Like it was my own body," she said simply, her eyes glittering again, faint shadows dancing over her features as she kept her powers invoked.

 _Ho-ly shit,_ I thought, gaining a sudden profound respect for her pain tolerance.

"I'm feeling it for her," she explained quietly. The passenger wasn't really paying attention to us or the firefighters or anything, seemingly lost in her own little world, probably trying very much to pretend this was all a nightmare.

Right then the Jaws cut through the last bits of twisted metal, and the remains of the car were lifted off of her. Blood was splashed liberally everywhere, and shards of bone and shreds of muscle poked through the skin of her right leg, and the left was grotesquely bent backwards at the knee. With infinite care and unseemly haste, Keller, me, and two firefighters got her strapped to the gurney and packed into the ambulance. But the minute Keller took her hand away from the girl to drive, she started screaming again.

My head was about to explode from the sound and the stress of holding my powers back, and I finally broke. I would think about the consequences later, if there was a later.

"Keller, park this somewhere, now!" I yelled not two blocks from the crash site, and let the ember-fire explode from within me. It rushed up so quickly it filled the back of the ambulance with an explosion of red light, and I vaguely registered the bus coming to a halt. The life-fire of the girl beneath my hands was flickering dangerously, and thin shadows, like black lightning, crawled over it in echoes of her injuries. There was a gasp from somewhere beside me, and the screaming suddenly stopped again.

I shuddered slightly in fear and reaction for what I was doing, but also in an odd exultation. I could see the fire getting stronger, shoving aside the shadowed lightning, and began to feel the same kind of triumph I had when I had just won a fight… Then I felt pain sing along my nerves, and my concentration was shattered. Keller was kneeling next to me, pulling me back from the passenger, faint shadows leaving her hands as she stopped invoking her powers. I realized, with growing anger, that she had just used them on me to break my healing trance.

"Too many questions," she said quickly. "The firefighters, the bystanders, they saw her hurt. If she shows up perfectly fine, or just decides to walk home and not go at all, they'll be too many questions. The surgeons can take care of the rest, she's out of danger now."

The anger burned itself out as quickly as it had roused. I looked back down at the girl, seeing her left leg back in place, and most of the bones of her right back within the skin. While she still looked like she had been in a car crash, she no longer looked like butchered meat. The logic of Keller's cool request got through to me, and I pulled myself back.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't think of a safe… mundane way to break your trance," she apologized quickly, and slid back up front to continue our interrupted journey to the hospital. I busied myself with getting the girl an IV to help with the blood loss, getting her vital stats to give to the ER doctors, thankful beyond measure that she was no longer screaming. And now that I was no longer in trance, the pull on me was a whole lot less. Reluctantly I had to agree that Keller had been right… Having her show up fully healthy from a near-lethal crash would have started a round of questioning only the Bureau could have stopped.

In ten minutes, we had dropped the girl off at the ER, to no more questions than usual, and then were able to go and park somewhere to finish up our paperwork. The minute we had stopped though, we turned to each other, nearly shouting the same question simultaneously.

"What the hell was _that?!"_


	31. Revelations in the Gray Zone

"What the hell was _that?"_

"You first," I growled, fist clenched. Fear was warring with anger inside me, anger at myself, fear of her, and also a kind of blank astonishment at both of us. "Careless" was something of an understatement for how we had both acted. I had basically made her use her powers in public, and then I had blithely used my own in front of a supervillain.

Keller simply stared at me for a long time, making me a little uncomfortable. She had a very peculiar serenity about her, I supposed because of dealing with her powers, which was normally more than a little creepy. As EMTs, we were supposed to be the calm ones in a crisis, but she was like that all the time. It certainly didn't make reading her any easier.

"Why is it always me first?" she asked. I scowled at her. "Ah yes, because I'm the super villain. I'm the bad guy." Her expression turned bitter, and I tried not to feel guilty. _She's trying to make you feel bad about this, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts,_ my brain commented acidly. I've never gotten into a bet with myself before, because I always lost, and I wasn't about to start now.

"Go on," I said shortly.

"You're a real idiot. You don't think about consequences, honestly! You're letting that whole Phoenix persona of yours take over, and it's going to get you into trouble. You can't save everyone, and you'll kill yourself or others trying." I stopped my mouth from dropping open just in time. I hadn't been expecting a lecture on secrecy and caution from her.

"So what, don't try? Don't think, don't feel?" I asked acidly, striking back.

"Don't put words in my mouth," she said.

"Then what?" I asked. "Why are you helping me? Why cover for me? Why tell me anything about you? It makes no damn sense!" Frustrated anger crossed her face, the first real time I had seen her show any strong emotions. I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn't going to like her answer.

"If you blow your cover, even if you don't give me up, even if _somehow_ the Bureau doesn't recognize me, there's going to be questions. Reporters and photographers, investigators and journalists, all wanting to know the 'inside scoop.' They'll ask questions, want to know my story, take my picture, and they won't leave me alone. The academy will find out, and that… wouldn't be good," she explained, a brief expression of fear showing.

The few times heroes had managed to blow their cover identities beyond what the Bureau could repair, the media had descended like locusts on anyone who had known them. Blithely I hadn't even considered what might happen to my co-workers if I got careless. The Bureau could frustrate access to my close friends and family, considering they were all heroes too, but everyone else was fair game. As for the academy… I realized that the paparazzi were nothing in comparison to what they could do.

"What would they do?" I asked.

"The academy would kill me, because they know torturing me is pointless. The Bureau would put me in jail," she said shortly.

"Why risk it in the first place? Why didn't you just leave when I showed up in June?" I asked.

"They gave me a task, and leaving it half-done because of a minor setback would be considered a weakness. I didn't manage to survive the academy by asking to be coddled," she said.

Survive _the academy? Considered a weakness? Good grief, how are they teaching them?_ I thought. Not to mention the fact she had implied they tortured or killed people for compromising their cover or failing something. I suddenly remembered Bruin, and the comment he had made to us back last fall. _"We didn't all want this,"_ he had said. Had she been forced into the academy? She had implied she joined willingly, but…

"Then how did you survive?" I asked. She didn't answer, not surprisingly, so I switched questions.

"What did you do back there to that girl?"

"Pain diversion," she explained shortly.

"Was that new or what? You looked kind of surprised."

"It wasn't something new… I've done it before, it was just a very long time ago," she said slowly.

"How long?" I asked.

"Over ten years," she said quietly. I quickly calculated backwards, being that she was in her late twenties and had powered up for the first time at thirteen…

"Your grandmother?" I hazarded. She shot me a sharp glance and nodded reluctantly.

"Her cancer was extremely painful, and she hated taking drugs for it because they clouded her mind," she explained.

I tried to wrap my mind around that; that a thirteen year-old girl, newly come into her powers, and _not_ from a super-powered family, had willingly taken on a dying woman's pain. If that didn't count as a heroic action, I didn't know what did. Now things made a hell of a lot less sense.

"That was how you first used your powers?" I asked. She shook her head, her hair hiding her face slightly.

"No, the first several times they worked the other way. That was why she ended up taking the drugs in the first place. I had… to do a lot of experimentation at first. I didn't know what had happened to me. Books helped a little, but practicing was the only way to really learn," she said.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of books and websites that described various super-powers, how to tell if you had them, and how to use them. Most of them were pure bullshit, but there were a few that were written by retired superheroes or sidekicks, and authorized by the Bureau, to give some kind of real guidance to first-generation powers. It was inevitable that some people would show up that, like Keller, hadn't powered up publicly and thus had slipped through Bureau detection. Giving them a legitimate way to get their powers under control helped find them, considering those books kept emphasizing for the would-be heroes to go to their local Bureau office to get tested.

I couldn't imagine how frightening it must have been to suddenly develop such a superpower while the only family you had ever known had been stricken with a painful, terminal illness. I knew I was probably going to get powers at some point in my life, and even though I had been angry at discovering I had my father's powers, what would it have been like to think you were completely normal and suddenly power up? Particularly when your first time had been to increase the pain of a loved one?

"Why didn't you go to the Bureau?" I asked her. She shot me a sardonic glance.

"I was thirteen and knew I was going to go into foster care in a few months when Grandma died. And I had pain powers. What superhero has pain powers?" she asked rhetorically. "People with powers like mine, poison, pain, disease, they end up as villains anyway. There's no good way to use them, and you can't just stay out of the conflict unless you choose to never use your powers. And I _had_ to use mine. Someone eventually noticed, and I was just lucky it was Royal Pain and not the Bureau, or I'd be in jail right now."

For some reason I was strongly reminded of Ms. Olsen and her lessons on why some super-powered people turned to villainy. Keller's comment on how you couldn't stay out of the conflict was pretty much true as well. If you found out you had powers, you either got noticed by the Bureau and decided to become a hero, or you decided to use your powers for your own purposes, Bureau be damned. And that always tended to lead to unwanted attention by heroes, which soon led to a superbattle. The only way to have superpowers and not get drawn into the superhero/supervillain conflict was to not use them, or not get caught. Keller obviously had done a pretty good job of not getting caught up until Royal Pain had found her. And since we were now deep in personal stuff whether I wanted to be or not… I kept the questions coming. The more I could question her, the less time she would have to question me.

"Why would you be in jail?"

"Because I had been using my powers on my patients, fool!" she snapped. "That's not exactly an ethical use of them."

"So you had people that came to you to help them deal with chronic pain problems, and you enhanced their pain?" I asked, both horrified and disgusted. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"I _have_ to use my powers or I get backlash. If I go without using them for too long, they feed back on me. My vision goes blurry, I get weak; if I go too long I can end up blind or paralyzed for hours at a time, even days. Some of these people were genuinely in pain, but couldn't get past their little daily troubles. So after a round with me, suddenly their day-to-day pain was negligible and they could go home," she said almost frantically.

"What happened when it didn't work?" I asked faintly, trying to digest that. Some of Ms. Olsen's lecture came to mind. _"_ _Sometimes a person's powers are very hard to control, possibly even turning on their wielder and causing them emotional distress or even physical harm. If these unstable super-people aren't picked up by super-villains or find some other way of coping, they often do something very drastic."_ Keller had found a way to cope, all right, but… damn. That seriously had to suck.

"Sometimes…" she trailed off, and her face crumpled slightly. "The people we dealt with, even before I came, sometimes just couldn't deal with their situation. Sometimes people ended up being institutionalized, or in a few cases they attempted suicide. A few of my patients… that happened to them. I don't know if it was because of my powers, or if it would have happened anyway. I just don't know."

 _Damn…_ I thought again. It was a vicious Catch-22 situation, and all choices were equally bad. I wasn't even sure if there _was_ an ethical solution to her problem. Could I have calmly accepted going blind or paralyzed periodically if I chose not to use my powers? Would I honestly be able to never power up again, if I had to make a choice? I _liked_ my powers, even with the troubles they gave me, and I really couldn't imagine being without them, even voluntarily. _I wonder…_

"So was that why you joined the academy?" I asked.

"Royal Pain said she could teach me how to use my powers, how to control them. That the Bureau would put me in jail for misusing them anyway, so it was easier to get the drop on them by coming with her. So it would have been jail time, or a chance to learn how to use them. By the time I found out the details, there was really no going back. I just endured what I had to to survive," she said.

"Details?" I prompted, getting the shape of Royal Pain's scheme in my mind. _She finds vulnerable first generation powers, and threatens them with exposure if they don't come to the academy. And paints the Bureau as some kind of dictatorship that'll lock them away for life if they ever use their powers outside of academy protection, so they never come looking to the one place that could have helped them. Fucking brilliant._

Keller suddenly gave herself a quick shake, as if throwing off a bad memory, and I saw her mask-like expression suddenly slip back into place.

"My turn to ask questions," she said, her voice a little harder.

"We're not doing this quid pro quo," I reminded her. "What details?"

"No, I get to ask questions too," she said sharply.

"I don't think so-," I started.

"Why do you think I was chosen to be a spy?" she asked me.

"No idea," I said shortly.

"I told you everything. I gave you all the information you needed," she said simply, and a little arrogantly.

"Then I couldn't put it together. Why are you a spy?" I snapped.

"What's the primary danger for someone knowing a spy's identity?"

"If they get uncovered, it's a lot harder to spy, because no one will tell you anything. And everyone will be watching you," I said after a second. That's what made her actions so senseless…

"And?" she prompted, as if I were a student that had only given half an answer.

"If you know who they are, then you can get them to leave by…" I trailed off as what she was saying started to make a horrible sense. A few dozen pieces of information suddenly began to fit together, and the picture they made was not pretty.

"By threatening those they love," she finished. "Their family and friends."

"But you-," I started, realizing what her family history on the second day of our acquaintance had meant.

"I was chosen to be a spy because I'm older than the others, and I lived as a normal person up until four years ago. I have an established identity as a tax-paying, normal citizen with a perfect normal record. I'm sane. And I have no family or friends to use against me," she said in a very level tone of voice. "I'm expendable. You can't threaten me with physical pain, and I have no emotional attachments to use against me. _You can't hurt me._ "

Icy terror suddenly gripped my heart as I realized the implications. Her odd openness now began to make sense. In a strange way, she was pretty much free to do as she wanted, and now she knew far too much about me… _I am a prize moron._

"And I already knew you could heal," she added.

She now had my full and undivided attention.

"How?" I asked warily.

"Last fall. I saw your hands were on fire when you got the guinea pig, but I could tell you weren't hurting her. I could tell you were lessening her pain. My power is pretty rare, so when I told my teachers, they figured it out what you must have been doing."

 _Fuck, it_ was _the academy that was spreading the rumors. Crap, they probably have my capture as some kind of graduation exercise or something!_ I waited for the axe to fall, honestly expecting her to pull out power neutralizer shackles or the door to fall open and the rest of her group to surround me. Escape didn't enter into it right now, because the only way I could stop her would be to kill her. She had conclusively proved that her pain tolerance was so high, that I basically couldn't disable her. I'd have to break bones, at the very least, to keep her from coming after me, and I couldn't bring myself to do that.

She kept staring at me, her face a cool mask, moments passing as my surge of fear sharpened my senses, preparing me to fight whether I wanted to or not. But she just kept staring, keeping utterly calm, as my brain started working again. Behind her still expression, her eyes were filled with fear, and I realized she was just as frightened as me. A few more things clicked into place.

_She's been here over ten months, since just after we fought them last September. How long would it take to figure out the information I think she's after? It doesn't take ten months to get a good grip on how fast heroes take to respond. She's been here too long. She doesn't have any backup!_

_Royal Pain basically threatened her to get her into the academy… then things must have been so hard she couldn't get out until they let her. And by then, they must have had other things on her… If nothing else, attacking us! If she leaves, they can give her up to the Bureau in an anonymous tip. And if she turns on them, she's already seen how they deal with traitors._

_She was trying to live a normal life; she didn't grow up in the superhero world. If she hadn't had to use her powers, Royal Pain would have never found her. If she had never been found, I bet she would have never become a supervillain._

_And she was helping me so I wouldn't send her to the Bureau. She said the Bureau could imprison her, but the academy would only kill her. Death doesn't scare her so… prison does?_

I closed my eyes for a second, her cold words warring with what I had seen her do over the last couple of months, of her quiet and unassuming history compared to her quiet and ruthless use of her powers against Zack. _Warring. Her words and her actions are at war with each other._ Suddenly everything snapped into place.

"You want out, don't you?" I asked softly, hoping to God I had read her right. She rocked back in her seat, shock playing over her features before anger hardened them.

"I'm not a nice person, Warren. I used my powers on my patients. I was one of the school torturers; when people failed to do what they were supposed to, I used my powers to punish them, to break them. I earned my title by making people scream," she said, glaring at me with hooded eyes.

"So, you're a sadist?" I asked almost conversationally. I had the upper hand back in this conversation, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let up on her now. She was trying so hard to do something, but I wasn't quite sure what yet. Part of what she was telling me made me want to feel sympathy for her. And part of it made me want to hate her. Maybe they weren't mutually exclusive. The thought made my head hurt. I was rapidly getting in deeper than I could handle.

"No! No," she said, shaking her head. "The way my powers work… I have to feel pain before I can amplify it. And I can handle more than most other people. I don't enjoy hurting people, not really."

I felt a little ill. That was how Mom had said her powers worked, that she had to feel emotions before she projected them. But the thought of comparing their powers was sickening. In a twisted way, she had thought she was doing something to help her patients. And then Royal Pain had decided she should be one of the school torturers… _As one more way to convince her she was meant to be a villain?_ I thought. _Get her in too deep to leave?_

"So you're a masochist then?" I asked, keeping up the pressure on her.

"No! I don't _like_ pain, I can just handle it. I… find it life-affirming," she said, hands spread as she tried to explain.

 _Ok, that's sick and twisted…_ I thought. _Oh yeah, and who can traipse around in the middle of a burning building without any worries? You can frolic around in fire; she can prance around in pain. That's her power; she's stuck with it. If she weren't able to get something good out of it she would have offed herself years ago!_

"You don't make any sense," I said finally, exasperated. Her contradictory nature was giving me a very bad headache, and I was seriously torn about what I was supposed to do next. The only leverage I had against her was the Bureau, and she had threatened me pretty badly. On the other hand, I now had the source of those damn rumors, and a pretty good idea as to how Royal Pain had gotten some of her students to do her bidding.

"I don't have to make sense! I'm a supervillain!" she snapped, throwing her hands up dramatically.

 _Believe me, hate me, I'm evil, and I can prove it. Help me, this is my power and I can't not use it._ My brain wanted to implode at the implications of her cross-purpose confessions. I forced myself to a moment of calm, trying to dig out something that would catch her off-guard.

"If you don't have anything that can be used against you…" I said slowly. "The academy doesn't either. If they can't catch you, if the Bureau were out of the picture, they couldn't do anything do you, could they?"

Her eyes widened slightly, and I saw her start to go pale.

"No," she whispered. "Except I couldn't stay hidden forever. She found me once, because of my powers and how I was using them. They'd find me again. Even if I never used them against my patients, they'd just have to wait until backlash hit."

A few months ago I would have scoffed at a power that had fed back and controlled its owner. I had never heard of such a thing in my life, right up until it happened to me. So I wasn't inconceivable that other people could have weird quirks of control. She had implied Royal Pain had found her after she had used her powers on her patients, and presumably whoever was running the academy now might be able to do so again. So she wouldn't want to leave just to get caught. But did she honestly want to leave in the first place?

"You _do_ want out though, right? You don't want to be a supervillain," I asked. She clenched her hands into fists and stared at the dashboard.

"You don't know everything about me, Phoenix, no matter all that I've said. You don't know me."

"But I can hurt you," I pointed out. I was only a phone call away from getting her in jail, if I wanted to, and she needed to remember that. Because right now that was one of the few ways I had of overpowering her. If she decided that she couldn't leave the academy, I had a sneaking suspicion I would be the first victim of her renewed conviction to villainy. The Bureau was the only club I held over her.

" _Now_ who's the sadist?" she snapped.

"You think this is any easier for me? Half the Bureau is just waiting for me to screw up, and if they found out I was working with a supervillain-."

"So if I'm not a supervillain anymore, then that makes it easier for you? What about if you 'redeem' me? Think that'll make up for _daddy's_ little stunts?" she said in a taunting sing-song.

My temper snapped, and fire flared briefly along my hands as I struggled with my temper. Right now I just wanted to hurt her back, consequences be damned.

"Smart as you are, you think your grandmother would want to see you waste everything as a supervillain?" I yelled back. She looked stricken, as if I had slapped her, and I let the flames die as guilt flooded me. Her only family for the first thirteen years of her life, and I dared to put words in her mouth. And I knew what it was like to have someone go after you like that. _You are such an insensitive moron sometimes…_

"You fight dirty," she said quietly. I kept my mouth shut.

"And you're as much of a masochist as I am then, aren't you? You're half-killing yourself with work, trying to fix everything you can on your own…"

"Don't," I said shortly. "Just don't." _I refused to be psychoanalyzed by her…_

 _What, can't take what you can dish out?_ my brain demanded.

"What? You're trying to pick apart my motives too. And I'm not going to sit here and let you tear me apart. I could go back and let the experts handle it, if I were being _really_ masochistic," she said tightly.

"I'm not-," I started to protest. _Yeah, you couldn't hurt her physically to threaten her, so now you're doing it emotionally and mentally. Just keep telling yourself you're a good kid Peace, and eventually you might start to believe it._

"Not trying to tear me apart? No, I won't believe that. You want to know what I'm up to. You think you know what I've been doing. I haven't told you half of it," she said fiercely.

"You've been here how long? Ten months? And haven't done anything but observe? I don't think a real supervillain could have waited."

"So I'm not a real supervillain?" she said challengingly.

"No, I don't think you are. Last fall, you just did what Cutter told you to, didn't you?"

Her expression got tight and still.

"A real supervillain wouldn't have been able to wait this long. A real supervillain wouldn't have helped me, or used her powers to help others. That's what you've been doing. You've even been helping me catch other villains," I pointed out.

"I could prove you wrong, right here, right now," she said, her voice a little thick, raising one hand slightly.

"I don't think you will. I don't think you want to," I said with way more confidence than I was feeling. I had a sudden horrible feeling I had just pushed her into a corner, and if I couldn't convince her of what I thought she was telling me, she was going to go on a rampage just to get a little control back. _That wouldn't be a good thing…_ I seriously needed to talk to my mom if I got through this in one piece.

"And if I'm not? What if I'm not? If I'm not a villain then what am I? I can't be a hero!" she protested, trembling.

"Why not? I am, and you already know about my dad," I pointed out. Her shaking got worse. I clenched my own hands to keep them from shaking as well. This was taking a lot more courage and resolve than facing the supervillains I had been fighting against for the last couple of months, and took more poise than even facing my grandfather.

_What the hell are you doing Peace? She hurt your friends and put you on a target list._

_What Royal Pain did to her isn't right. She deserves a real choice of what to do with her powers, not just be tied to the academy because she was lied to._

Royal Pain was a pretty decent liar, able to completely fool the students and staff of Sky High, two of the world's greatest heroes, and Will. Though it hadn't taken much with Will. If she hadn't been impatient or sore with Stronghold, I had no doubt that he would have been at Homecoming with his parents. And I would probably be an evil toddler right now.

Keller breathed carefully through her nose, trying to get herself calm.

"You name me _one damn hero_ with powers like mine, and maybe I'll think about turning my back on the one place where I've _belonged_ for four years," she challenged. I took a single deep breath, the answer on the tip of my tongue.

"Psysick," I said almost immediately. She looked dumbfounded; she obviously hadn't expected me to have an answer.

"Who?" she asked faintly.

"Psysick, he's kind of new. He was in my class. He makes people sick," I explained. Justin's superhero name was fairly obvious and easy to remember, for which I was extremely grateful. I didn't have all my classmates' names memorized yet. "You said disease was a supervillain power. Well, he has it, and he's a hero."

She opened her mouth in shock, her eyes going huge in her pale face.

"No," she said faintly, shaking her head.

"Look, Royal Pain is a liar. She fed you a bunch of bullshit so you wouldn't dare leave," I pointed out.

"No… I hurt people, I did. A lot of people, dozens, maybe more. My patients, the students. I can't do it…" she said, shaking her head more violently, her whole body trembling.

"You say I don't know anything about you. Lemme ask you something, you said you hurt your patients, both because you were trying to help them and you _had_ to use your powers right?" I asked carefully. _I have to say this just right, please let me get this right…_

"Yes," she whispered shakily.

"And you used your powers on the students because that was how you had to practice your powers? That's what the teachers there told you?" Another trembling nod.

"You said you weren't a sadist. Did you _want_ to hurt them?"

"No," she said after a moment. "I… like using my powers. But I don't want to hurt people. I don't… there's no _good_ way to use them! I can't be a hero!"

"What, you think there's any good way to use mine?" I asked her. She looked at me blankly.

"You can heal," she said flatly.

"Forget that. I'm a pyrokinetic, and that's what I use when I fight. I have to hurt people to get them to stop or surrender. And I don't like it either. But I have to, because it makes the world better," I explained a little hesitantly. The ethics of powers like mine were on a fairly thin line, which was why there were slightly more 'kinetic villains than heroes.

A light seemed to dawn in her eyes, but then they seemed to dim.

"No… no, no!" she said sharply, and then sagged in her seat.

"Keller?" I asked her, wondering if I had just managed to say the wrong thing and had set her off.

"Said… backlash. Been… too long. Went through three rounds… trying to keep my word these… last months… Just…" she trailed off and her face went slack.

"Fuck," I said softly, and leaned over. She had just used her powers tonight, but she hadn't exactly been using them a lot. And I had just put her through an emotional wringer of monumental proportions. That didn't exactly have a really good effect on anyone with superpowers, and as far as I knew, it could have made things worse. Actually, that probably _had_ made things worse. Must worse.

She was breathing, and her pulse was slow but steady. Her eyes were blank and unseeing, and her body was limp, held in the seat by her safety belt. Cursing myself, her, and the world in general, I unbuckled her and moved her to the gurney in the back. She was lost in her own private unseeing, unfeeling hell, and I had put her there.

 _Brilliant, hero. Now, what are you going to do about it?_ She said this backlash, if that's what it was, hadn't ever killed her, but there was no way I could just wait for her to snap out of it. The thought of being without sight or feeling for hours or days was horrific.

For the second time that night, I let the ember-fire flare along my hands, quieter and under more control now as I put my hands on her temples. The feeling of wrongness about Keller was much, much less than the girl in the car wreck, thankfully. I concentrated carefully, and did a mental double-take when I got my first look at her life-fire. I had seen injuries as shadows or lightning, but her problems were a smooth black band across the middle of her flames, constricting tight like a rubber band. _Huh… o…k._

 _Cut the band, free the fire…_ I thought. _Careful, don't burn her, don't put too much power into it._ I imagined the fire as a blade, not just burning away the band, but cutting it as well. I was startled into breaking my trance when I actually heard an audible snap as the band burst. When I opened my eyes in surprise, Keller was staring at me, her eyes clear and seeing. Very slowly, she reached up and took my hands off of her head.

"I… owe you. I didn't mean to fall over like that. I'm sorry," she said, sounding only marginally calmer than she had before she collapsed.

"It's ok. It was my fault for pushing you," I said, sitting back on the bench on the far wall, my hands clasped together to hide their trembling. I was not having a good night, power-wise or otherwise. Keller shook her head.

"No, what I said was true. I haven't done anything much with my powers for months. I was just trying to hold on until I got home. I… I'm sorry," she said, sitting up on the gurney. "It takes a fair amount to hold it off, and it gets worse with each round."

"When did that first happen to you?" I asked softly, to distract her from thinking about it. I sure wouldn't want to dwell on an experience like that for _any_ length of time.

"Right… right before Grandma died," she said softly.

I don't know if it was because I had just healed her, but an idea flashed across my mind, a memory from class with Mrs. Richards. _"How you first power up can affect how you power up for years,"_ she had said to us. I had first powered up in anger, and that's how I ended up thinking it necessary for so long. Not that I still didn't need to be somewhat mad to power up even now, but it wasn't nearly so all-consuming. But Keller's backlash was so strange, so oddly specific, and her "symptoms" that I had seen in her life-fire were too perfect, almost artificial. And any superpower was subject to self-doubt, which could affect your powers pretty profoundly. As Ms. Olsen had said once, _"If you expect_ anything _out of your powers, you'll probably get it."_

"Did she go blind and paralyzed at the end?" I asked, in a moment of blinding clarity. Keller had said she was trying to deflect her grandmother's pain. And maybe, at the end, with a blood relative dying, she had deflected something else.

"…Yes," Keller said, the last of the color draining from her face. "Just for a little bit."

"So…" I said cautiously. My guesses and suppositions were made on half-known information she had chosen to impart, and I was only relying on my mom's training to guide me. I had gambled my knowledge and insight, even my powers, on what I hoped was the truth. I had been lucky; I had possibly been able to convince her to turn away from the academy, to take out another supervillain without needing to use my powers. If this didn't all go south, maybe I could really help her…

"I didn't have to," she said faintly. "All this time, I didn't have to…"

 _She didn't have to use her powers; the backlash was something she had done to herself. And the academy didn't give a rat's ass about helping her, they just wanted to use her, and her own problems be damned._ God, how much of a blow to the gut would that be?

"No, no, no, no, no…" she began to chant. I actually _saw_ something break behind her eyes, like her last vestige of sanity. Then she screamed, burying her face in her hands and rocking back and forth, sobbing in pain and despair. I actually stumbled backward in the small space, frightened beyond measure. The howling, desperate thing in front of me wasn't the coolly calm person I had known for the last few months, and I felt sick and terrified when I realized it was my fault I had done this to her.

 _Oh God, I broke her,_ I thought hysterically. I had shoved at her, dredging up painful memories, confronting her on things she had likely buried inside herself for years, all on the justification that she was a villain and I had to get the information out of her. I had no idea how to fix this now. Shaking, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and hit the first speed dial number.

"Mom?" I asked the moment it connected.

"I need your help. I'm in over my head."


	32. Disconnection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick point of information to my non-American readers, Pepto-Bismol is a thick pink minty liquid medicine sold as a remedy for stomach and digestion problems in the States.

What followed after that was possibly the worst night of my life.

Mom arrived maybe a half-hour later; I don't know if she had been working or asleep or something else entirely when I had called her. Afterward I was too afraid to ask. By that time, Keller had gone from screaming to weeping, but I didn't dare say another word to her, or even to lay a finger on her. I was worried that anything I would do would end up doing something irrevocably worse to her.

No other calls had come in yet; hopefully Coop thought we were still at the hospital, as we hadn't called to tell him we were free yet. I wouldn't do so until Keller had a chance to get calm, at the very least. Before that could happen though, Mom finally pulled up.

"Warren, what happened?" she asked as she opened the door, nearly flying to the back of the ambulance. "Is it one of your patients?"

I couldn't even explain exactly, at least not to her right then, so I just opened the back doors.

"What's her name?" Mom said softly. Keller still had her head in her hands, hiding her face from both of us.

"Monica Keller," I said quietly.

"Monica? Monica, my name is Joy, I'm here to help you-," Mom stopped talking abruptly as Keller raised her head. Though the light was uncertain, and her face was wet with tears and her eyes swollen from crying, it was still very obvious she was one of the supervillains I had fought last fall. To her credit, Mom's hesitation didn't last more than a second.

"Will you let me help?" she asked gently. Keller only stared for a moment, and then finally nodded. Mom reached out and placed a hand on her forearm, and Keller lost some of the desperate wild look in her eyes. "Rest for a little bit, just lie down. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Keller swallowed, nodded, and finally lay back down on the gurney. Then Mom grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and hauled me around to the front so Keller couldn't overhear us.

"I want to know everything you know about her, everything you guessed about her, everything she's done, and everything you said to her starting from the first time you met, again, until a half-hour ago," she said flatly. Temporizing, stalling, or justifying anything I had done was completely out of the question. I proceeded to sing like a canary while Mom ruthlessly cross-examined me. She drug up things I hadn't even remembered consciously, and then finally held out her hands to me, silently demanding to use her powers to read me.

I dropped my hands in hers, pulse racing in fear. She closed her eyes for a few moments, and then opened them again. The expression on her face nearly stopped my heart. She looked like about how I must have when I had faced down Tobias in our first meeting. _I am in serious trouble._ Right on the heels of that thought, Mom dropped my hands.

"That girl is having a nervous breakdown because of what you did to her. Now, you will call your supervisor and tell them Monica had to go home sick. Then you will finish your shift, and you will return here as soon as you get off. Is that understood?" she said with a kind of drill-sergeant sharpness. I nodded once, and Mom walked back around the ambulance, and got Keller out, leading her around to sit on the curb.

I, very meekly, got back into the ambulance. The radio was already squawking loudly, something we had all tuned out for the last little while.

" _657 respond, respond immediately!"_ Coop was yelling in a slightly frantic tone of voice.

"Yeah Coop, 657 here."

" _Peace, the next time you drop off the grid for an hour and a half and I'm going to fire you both! What the hell is going on?"_ he demanded.

"It took us a while to get the car wreck victim all settled, and then Monica started to feel really sick and had to go home," I explained. That wasn't quite a lie, not really.

"Whaddya mean, went home sick? She hasn't been sick since the day she got here!" Coop demanded with irritation.

"I don't know, she just said she wasn't feeling well and couldn't finish her shift," I said. Coop sighed explosively.

"All right, get back to base, Josh will finish out your shift with you," he groused. "Base out."

There was usually at least one, if not two other people at base besides the dispatchers that could fill in during situations like this, or if another ambulance was needed and everyone else was busy. Josh, a guy who had been on the job maybe ten years, had been looking forward to a quiet night at base, and lost no time filling my ears with complaints as we went out again. But as long as he was on long diatribes about his girlfriend, his apartment, his dog, his family, and his interrupted video game session, I didn't have to do more than agree or disagree at appropriate intervals.

The night might have been just about complete if I had gotten a call on top of everything else, but evidently life didn't hate me that much. Josh was too wrapped up in his own concerns to notice that I was about five shades paler than normal with stress, and hadn't said a whole sentence since he got into the bus. I was in such serious stomach pain out of guilt and fear, I felt like I needed to chug a whole bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

The night dragged while I tried to figure out what was going to happen when I got back to my mom's car. This was the first time I had really seen her mad at me, and that scared me even more than whatever might be happening to Keller. Like I had seen, when Mom got mad, she could be a force of nature. And if anyone could push her buttons, it was me, even if I hadn't meant to.

By the time the sun had come up and my shift was over, Josh still hadn't wound down his series of complaints, and I rudely left him still talking when I punched out. I couldn't have repeated a word of his complaints back, despite the fact I had been listening all night. I didn't even remember the drive back to the parking lot where I had left Mom and Keller. The only bit of relief I got was that both of them looked reasonably calm.

That relief was quickly shattered when Mom quickly steered me into the passenger side of the car and closed the door so we could have privacy to talk.

"Warren, I know you got good grades in Moral Dilemmas class. So why did you do this? You were psychologically torturing that girl and you knew it," Mom demanded.

_Do not justify, do not temporize, just tell her the truth… Balls, I don't friggin' know why I did it that way._

"I… we put so much on having Mind Mist and the Ghost follow the Weaponsmaster, and then that was a bust," I started. Mom nodded slowly for me to go on, but she wasn't being very encouraging.

"And… when I figured out who she was, she said she'd blow both of our covers if I tried to bring her in. I… didn't want to do that. And I thought I could… get information out of her, and maybe kind of… mess up the academy at the same time…" Mom wasn't looking convinced.

"You pushed her too hard. You knew the signs of emotional distress, the frantic tones, the justifications, the shaking, the trembling… My God Warren, if triggering that psychological backlash wasn't a big red warning flag of how unstable she was, I don't know what else could be!" she said, her voice rising in anger.

"She's a supervillain-," I started.

"So's my husband!" Mom broke in. I collapsed back into the seat and hung my head. "So's your father. And even though he's committed many crimes, he doesn't deserve to be tortured for them. They're _people_ , Warren, supervillains are people too. Punishment for their actions is one thing. Wanton abuse is another."

 _Oh God…_ The thought that I had basically been taking out how I felt about my dad, or supervillains in general, on Keller was a mental wake-up call of horrific proportions. As superheroes, we weren't supposed to have sympathy for supervillains, because otherwise how could we do our jobs? I certainly didn't, and I had ample personal reasons to hate them. I remembered sending that letter to the warden of Metroplex Maximum Security back in my junior year, basically asking them to give my dad some headaches. At the time it had felt justifiable. Now it just seemed petty and cruel, but it was just a drop in the bucket compared to what I had done tonight.

I felt very small right then, and I felt my throat tighten with shame. Then Mom hugged me. Since right at that moment I was more expecting her to tell me to pack my stuff and move out by the afternoon, I was kind of in shock.

"It's not often you get a second chance to set something right," she said softly. "You know, Monica had basically forced herself not to feel anything so she could survive using her powers on others. And when she got to the academy, she either had to not feel or go crazy. She was rotting her own morality so she could live."

That drew me up short, because that was exactly Mom had told me had happened to my dad…

"It was like seeing Baron again," she said, confirming my thoughts. "Except there was a core of something good, something that had kept her from just giving in to what she thought she had to be."

"Like… what?" I asked, confused.

"Think about what you know about Tobias. Given the choice between an expedient solution and a moral one, what do you think he would choose? That's what Baron had to fall back on. Monica had something better than that under her," she explained. "But she hasn't been living that way for a very long time. You broke her out of that habit of unfeeling, even if your method wasn't very good, but now she doesn't know where she stands."

"I…" I said intelligently. When Mom decided lay on the guilt, she really slathered it on. She probably could have asked me to commit seppuku to purge my crime and I would have done it at that point. "What happens now?"

"I had to help her re-awaken her conscience, and it wasn't easy on her. It was actually quite painful. She needs help putting her world back in order. You're going to help her do it," Mom told me calmly. I attempted not to sputter in shock.

"But, you just said, I-," I babbled.

"The best way to learn something is to teach it. You need a refresher course in morals and ethics. She needs to re-learn morals and ethics. I think you're very well suited to learning from each other. You both _know_ the right thing to do, but you've both shoved it aside recently to do what was easy rather than right. But this time, you're not going to.

"And you're not going to have me looking over your shoulder like an anxious mother all the time either. You're eighteen, Warren. You're an adult, you have both a job and a calling. I've started you both on the right track, and you're going to figure out how to finish it, one way or another. You crossed the line, Phoenix. The Peacemaker commands this as the price of her silence," she said very formally.

"Silence?" I asked dumbly.

"The Bureau would have a conniption fit if they found out you had been working with a supervillain for nearly three months without reporting her. And the fact that I just helped her doesn't make it any better. I think more harm than good would be done by exposing either of you. So… you will make this right. And she will learn what she needs to in order to feel worthy of herself again. And if you screw this up Warren…"

She trailed off, and I suddenly felt the barest trickle of anger, disappointment, and shame, not from me, but from her. It was powerful enough to rock me. I realized this was how Mom could walk into a war zone and tell people they would stop their conflicts, or else. Her unspoken threat was much more potent than anything she could have said, and I was mentally cowering. It was all I could do to prevent myself from physically cowering as well.

Mom looked at me hard, nodded sharply once.

"You can do this, you know," she said cryptically, and shooed me out of the car, pulling out a few moments later. I wasn't sure if I should feel reassured or more worried. I settled for reassured; I was worried enough. I half-collapsed on the curb, blinking vaguely in astonishment. Monica waited a few moments before coming over and sitting next to me so we wouldn't be shouting across the parking lot.

"So… I'm not sure which one of us had the worse night, you or me," she said casually, raising an ironic eyebrow at me. The situation had suddenly become totally absurd, and I found myself laughing weakly. Monica shook her head a little, smiling, and sighed.

"You look like she just read you the riot act," she commented.

"Yeah…" I said, not really wanting to get into it.

"I can't say I'm sorry to see the shoe on the other foot," she said.

"Thanks, my ego could use a little more battering," I said sarcastically.

"Well, if you really think so-," she started.

"No, thanks," I said quickly. "Why the hell are you so… chipper?"

"I'm probably going to have horrible nightmares for the next month and a half and be questioning every act I've done in the past ten years, but right now I feel like I just woke up from a bad dream. Right after someone ripped the scabs off all my wounds," she said thoughtfully.

"You really are masochistic," I said darkly.

"So're you," she countered. I took a few deep breaths with my eyes closed, reaching for a few scraps of inner calm.

"Ok, how about we make a deal. How about we both stop being masochists? Or at least idiots," I said neutrally. Monica considered that for a moment, and nodded.

"That's a good start," she said softly. "Thank you," she added after a moment. I started at that.

"Thank you for what?"

"For calling her. I've never… She was really something," she said. "You have to guess what the academy thought of people like her. I… never thought she would be so nice."

"Yeah," I murmured. "I don't know what they told you, but-."

"I'm starting to guess exactly how much was bull," she finished uncertainly. "It was my _life_ , you realize, for the last four years. This… all this." She waved her hand, indicating the parking lot, Maxville, or life in general. "This is all new to me."

"Me too," I reminded her. The thought that I had the responsibility for helping someone like her was disconcerting at best, and terrifying at worst. It was actually somewhat comforting to know she didn't have any more of an idea of what was going on than I did. If nothing else, it made us equals in ignorance.

* * *

At home, things went strangely. When I finally got into the house, Mom was sitting on the couch, a wad of tissues in her hand. Thinking had finally kicked in again on the drive home, and Mom's anger made sense, at least a lot more than the obvious. I had inadvertently dragged up everything with my dad, and had basically lied to my mom. And considering what had happened the last time she had been lied to, I thought I had gotten off very lightly in the parking lot.

"Come here, silly boy," Mom said with a bit of forced lightness. I sat down hard on the couch, looking at her with trepidation.

"I'm sorry?" I offered after a bit. Mom's eyes were a little red, but at least she wasn't crying. I don't think I could have handled making her cry. She made a kind of odd little snort, halfway between a cough and a laugh.

"If I didn't know how bad you were feeling about this right now, I'd be tempted to ground you for the rest of your natural life," she said in a kind of matter-of-fact tone.

Most high school students, after finally graduating, would at least like the idea of their own place, even if most of them couldn't figure out how to wash their own laundry, or have even the fraction of the cash to pay rent. I hadn't bothered even looking for my own place, despite the fact that superheroes were paid _very_ well. (The first time I had checked my account balance in mid-June I had actually wondered at first if someone had misplaced a decimal point or added an extra zero.) Mom and I only had each other, and leaving her alone in the house she had bought partially as a symbol of her return to the superhero world wasn't even an option. Besides, all my friends were in the neighborhood, and I got along great with Mom. But that still meant I had to follow her rules. And I knew she probably _could_ ground me, adult or no, and I would go along with it.

"If you wanted me to feel guilty, you got it," I said, reaching out to give her a hug.

"I know… I know. I let my temper get the better of me. You didn't deserve that," she whispered.

"Yeah, I actually think I did," I corrected. She laughed.

"I was angry. It was all bad memories, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you," she argued.

"Hey, _I'm_ mad at me right now too," I pointed out.

"Well, that's good. As long as it's motivating you, not clouding your judgment," she pointed out, sitting up. I took a deep breath and nodding, breathing out slowly, and trying to take out some of the complex welter of anger, fear, and confusion this night had left me with.

"I'll be ok Mom," I told her. "I'll do better, I promise."

Mom had given me half of her own sanctum so I could keep my superhero stuff separate from everything else, saying it gave her an excuse to forcibly clean out her area. My half was pretty empty still, mostly containing what fan mail Mandy had deemed would be inspirational rather than horrifying, as well as newspaper articles and Bureau reports on my fights. I went down there after talking with Mom so I could think a little. I soberly reflected on the fact that Monica was somewhat right about me; I was a little masochistic, because the stuff I had most prominent was the fights I had lost or at least hadn't gone very well. I had them out to remind me I could do better each and every night.

Despite any aspirations of boundless glory to the contrary, most of the supervillains I had been battling had been closer to Flashpoint's level than, say, the Brotherhood of Frost. Those heroes that got assigned to Maxville took care of "small time" problems; leaving the truly epic stuff to the Commander and Jetstream. I remember seeing some footage of them in class, including the massive, ten-story robot Royal Pain had sent against them the beginning of my junior year. _That_ had made quite an impression as to my eventual role in the grand scheme of things. What could _I_ have done against something like that? Warm up a toe? Maybe, if I had been on top of a building, I could have take out its eye, but then what?

Working with the Battle family had given me a confidence boost. Actually, more of an _over_ confidence boost. Alone, I couldn't take on multiple supervillains at once. And since supervillains were generally more ruthless than I was, they were willing to cause a situation I had to correct so they had escape. The choices were simple, save the citizen or capture the villain. Each time, I had chosen to save the citizen.

When Plasmastream had set the gas line on fire, when Fissiontronic had set off grenades in the underground parking garage, when Specter Haunt had thrown that guy right into my line of fire, each time I had dove right in, taking whatever lumps I had to in order to make things right. In the heat of the moment, I thought I had made pretty good decisions.

It angered me that in a more subtle situation, in the depths of shades of gray, I had made really crappy decisions. I had remembered thinking, back before graduation, that I hadn't wanted to use my healing power on random strangers, and I had wondered if I was only heroic when it 'mattered'. I had just borne that own in the worst way possible, and it pissed me off.

I was supposed to be a superhero. I was held to a higher standard, in my own mind if nowhere else. Rumors abounded of superheroes that had unsavory habits, but I wasn't going to let myself become one of them. As Mom had forcibly reminded me, I was an adult, and I had a calling. And with Mom being who _she_ was, I should have been doubly guarded against that kind of bad decision. Heroics didn't end when you punched the other guy's lights out, or hit him with a fireball, in my case. It would sure be easier that way, but I knew I could do better. I would have to.

* * *

The next week, it was the first day of school for the rest of my friends. With a little schedule juggling, Coach Boomer had managed to get their gym time for the first or last period of the day, either allowing me to catch the morning bus or the late bus. That Monday, it had been the late bus, making for one groggy me joining the rest of the gang on the floor of the Gauntlet for a few dry runs.

"Yeah, and Rob totally made himself look like Coach Boomer and had like, five freshman standing in the locker room for like a half hour! And they were too scared to leave because he kept threatening to come back and make them run laps if they did," Zack was saying when I got out. The gang was letting me know everything that was going on in Sky High, whether I wanted to know or not.

"So they missed half of fifth period and Mr. Medulla ripped them a new one. And when they explained what had happened, he called Boomer to yell at _him_ for making his students late. Then they got into a yelling match, and Boomer destroyed the intercom and half the stuff in the room, and Principal Powers moved Mad Science class to the small gym until they could get it fixed. Then Boomer decided to have a few rounds of 'Save the Citizen,' right after lunch, and you can guess how Mr. Medulla took _that,"_ Magenta picked up the thread of the highly entertaining saga of the first day back at school.

I listened to the banter with an odd sense of disconnection. I hadn't been there to see Rob flummoxing the freshmen, I hadn't heard Principle Powers' speech to the student body, or seen their reactions. I didn't get to hear the lunchroom jokes or see the posters for Power Clubs or choir practice or sports tryouts… It was funny, some kids spend most of their lives pissing and moaning about school, but once you get out of it and into the real world, you realize it's all you've ever known. The adjustment was a little strange. What time I wasn't working either as an EMT or as Phoenix I was training. I didn't have homework to do anymore, but that didn't exactly give me any extra free time.

But even though I was at one remove from school, Zack and Magenta were doing their best to keep me entertained and informed, inadvertently or not.

I didn't have to wear the school's armor to practice anymore, being able to use my own suit, which was a heck of a lot more comfortable. Boomer, apparently somewhat subdued by the whole fiasco with Rob, shouting match with Medulla, and the subsequent lecture by Principal Powers, was going easy on us today, letting us do some free-form hand-to-hand combat practice against each other.

Layla and Magenta were facing off on one side of the gym while Will supervised, while I was trying to teach Zack a kind of tug-and-throw move I had actually had used on me back in July. This one guy called Torque had a real passion for taking extremely supped-up cars on rampages through the downtown area. After I had melted his tires, we had gone into a knockdown drag-out fight, where I had ended up measuring my own length in asphalt more times than I cared to count. The upside to that was I think I learned a new move from him. The downside was that I hadn't exactly had the opportunity to ask him to slow down and I wasn't even sure if I was doing it right in the first place.

"Popsicle, you said you were learning judo right? That's throws and stuff. Does anything I'm doing look like anything you know?" I asked in frustration after Zack and I nearly knocked heads trying to throw each other off-balance. Ethan looked down at his shoes and actually blushed. From the other side of the gym, I heard Stronghold repressing laughter, and Magenta actually giggling.

"Dude, if this has something to do with Chloe…" Zack trailed off, smirking, and Ethan actually rolled his eyes.

"No. Henry was going to teach me but, um, I kind of found out I'm really, really, horrifically bad at martial arts. Like, Layla bad," he clarified. We all automatically looked over to the other side of the gym as Will was desperately trying to stifle huge whoops of laughter and Magenta was laughing so hard she was gasping for breath. Somehow Layla had managed to wrap _herself_ up in a cocoon of vines.

"Um… A little help here?" she asked pathetically. Will managed to get enough control over himself to get her free.

"That's pretty bad," I deadpanned. Ethan laughed behind his hand, and Zack nearly passed out trying to hold in his mirth.

"So, I can say I have no idea what the two of you are trying to do," he said somewhat cheerfully, and pulled out his Illustrated Lives of Superheroes book and started to thumb through it.

"Great," I said sarcastically. "Boomer's not going to let you read the rest of the time either."

"He's too busy talking to Principal Powers right now. I just saw her walk into the tower," Ethan said without even looking up. "I can do other things than fight. So why should I be third-rate and miserable at a kind of fighting I'm probably never going to do when I can tell you the weakness of anyone we go up against?" I couldn't refute that. Ethan's stun cap sneak attack in puddle form didn't require knowing any stances or throws or strikes, only him having a bit of the element of surprise and some halfway decent aim. He probably _should_ learn something, at some point, but today probably wasn't the one to bring it up.

It took almost the rest of the period for Zack and I to get the throw right, and by that time I think Layla had finally gotten beyond accidentally tripping herself up. Our summer practice sessions hadn't necessarily included fighting without our powers, mostly due to Layla's personal objections (or, more accurately, her mom's personal objections) and the fact that Ethan had been suspiciously good at distracting us with "necessary information," about our possible future foes. That had probably been on purpose, considering what he had just told us. And it gave me an idea…

* * *

"Hey Popsicle, I have a _real_ question for you," I asked. The day was finally over for Sky High, and the bus was flying back down to Maxville. Our group had taken over the back of the bus, as much as to keep our group from being overheard as anything else.

"Sure," he said, looking away from the window and pulling out his books. 'Real' questions in Ethan's world always involved superbeings, and it was something we had occasionally used as a codeword when I had called him a few times over the summer for some help.

"Are there other cases of people whose powers turn on them?" I asked. Ethan blinked a few times at the relative non-sequitor, and then opened his books. Everyone else looked at me a little oddly, but their expressions cleared fairly quickly. The question was a perfectly legitimate one for me, even if my asking was abrupt. Right now, the bus was perhaps the one place where we would all be both together and in a semi-private location. The floor of the Gauntlet, if Boomer was watching, was about the least private place you could get.

If I wanted to learn something like this, privacy and in the company of friends was the only way to do it. Or at least that's what I wanted them to think. I was curious as to how Monica's powers had been used against her; if it had been all in her head, or if someone in the academy had "helped" her along. But I obviously didn't dare put something like that forth to the rest of the gang. Even if Monica was willing to try to put the academy behind her, I couldn't quite handle my friends' reactions to her right now. I owed it to her, though, to help her any way I could.

"Yeah, I think so. Pretty sure I saw some. Mostly supervillains actually… the few heroes that had their powers turn on them were usually the victim of a reversal ray or some kind of deep personal problem," he said thoughtfully, scanning a few pages as he found the people he was looking for.

"Well, that doesn't exactly narrow it down…" I said with a bit of forced humor. Magenta and Layla gave me a sympathetic glance.

"Why are you worrying about it man? Don't you got this thing figured out?" Zack asked.

"I'm… having some problems keeping everything under wraps at work. I got everything I could from those journals but…"

"Want to see if there's more? I get it," Ethan said with the understanding of the academically insatiable.

"How is that going anyways? You haven't said squat about it," Zack asked. I gave an expansive shrug.

"Kind of tough, I guess. I didn't know you guys wanted all the details," I said evasively.

"Well hey man, the rest of us ain't gonna be in school forever," Zack pointed out.

"I have no free time, I'm working my butt off in both jobs, it's hard, and there's no way I would be doing anything else with my life," I said quickly, but with the punch of passion behind it. I had never minded hard work, and this was perhaps the hardest thing I had ever done. Being a hero, saving a villain, deceiving my friends while trying to help them, and maybe trying to figure out some way to resolve it all together. Hard? Very. But if I had wanted the easy road, I wouldn't have taken this path.


	33. Interlude:  Joy Peace

I am afraid for my son.

For months I knew something had been eating at him, something important, related to being a hero, and that could have devastating consequences. I had thought he might not have been getting along with his assigned partner, which could have meant risking his identity every time he had to be Phoenix. But he never said a word about it, and I could tell he was so uncomfortable that speaking about it would be like pulling teeth. So I pulled back, gave him space, and let him know I was there if I needed him.

If I had known earlier, might I have reacted differently? I could not say. For too much of Warren's life _he_ had been my strength, pulling us through the trials and tribulations of a difficult existence by pure force of will. I had been sunk in deep depression since before his birth, and only nearly losing _him_ to the same despair that had claimed me had shaken me out of my shell. Empathic powers are insidious, and as dangerous as they can be to those around you, they are more dangerous to the empath themselves. They can feed on self-doubt and turn it into reality.

Nearly two decades of inactivity was completely wiped away when he came into the house over two years ago after fighting in the cafeteria, radiating raw pain and shame like a nova. It was the pure passionate strength of his feelings that took me right out of my own circle of hell and into being the mother I always should have been for him. He reminded me so much of Baron, not in his vulnerability, but in his intensity. But unlike my husband, Warren I could reach, Warren I could help. Warren, I could save.

Baron had been the catalyst that turned me into the Peacemaker right out of high school. No one else in my family had been a public superhero; it was not just our emotion-based powers, but our family name as well. How could someone with any degree of empathic abilities go into a profession where they would have to _hurt_ people? Myself especially, I was the most powerful of my family, being able to read or project _any_ emotion under nearly any condition. My brother John could only sense, project, or repress fear. My older sister Jill could sense and project all different kinds of emotions, but only if both she and her subject were asleep. Mother was the same, except she could only use music as her vehicle.

Calmness was a byword all my family lived with. Meditation rituals dogged every single activity, and we were almost violently nonviolent. Even with all that help, I had to teach myself partially out of books, because I was so far beyond anything Mother could teach. Rituals became self-imposed law, and calmness a rigid structure to hold back the tiniest bit of emotional chaos. Perfect school notes, a precise brown-bag lunch, and a nearly pathological obsession with neatness were the hedges I used to keep my powers under control.

Then I met Baron. Trying to test my own calmness against drama queen high school actors had been the next logical choice, at least in my mind, to make sure I could control myself under any circumstances. And most of my fellow classmates were prima donnas, hams, clowns, or clueless. A little wild, but nothing that could even ruffle my feathers. But not him. He exuded passion even in the most innocuous of roles, turning even the high school musical into something far beyond what its composers intended. Yet overlaying that was the same kind of hard control I used to keep myself contained, and it fascinated me.

He showed me so much about myself that I could never repay him. He showed me "control" didn't mean "containment," and how passion could be used in service of one's powers instead of misusing them. And I never tried to repay, instead trying to give him myself, loving him, marrying him, and even having a child with him. The creation of the Peacemaker came from his passion for life and justice. It was he who gave me the idea how I could use my powers as an active superhero without having to hurt anyone. The greatest diplomat the world has ever seen was partially the brainchild of a man now serving a quadruple life sentence for murder and mayhem. The irony is staggering.

Warren has so much of his father in him. Not just in appearance or in powers, but in that driving passion. But while Baron's was like a fire in a steel furnace, Warren's is like bubbling lava under a thin stony crust. Pierce his control and he explodes, often in all directions, until he manages to seal it again. That's what I had been working with him to control since that fateful day in the cafeteria nearly three years ago. I had been so afraid to use my powers on him, but further fear of him shutting himself down, withdrawing behind those walls was too painful for me to sit idle.

So I gave him the tools he needed. Some I had given him years ago; the skill to sift truth from lies, to read people and know their motives. That day I gave him a few days with his temper tempered by my powers. It showed him he didn't have to live in anger, and slowly I saw him open up to the people around him. He had his first real taste of heroism when he helped save the school, and his almost involuntary friendships with his classmates drug him completely out of that dark place he had been living in. I taught him the meditation techniques to calm his mind, and told him often of my pride for him.

I could so easily have stopped him from being a hero if I had wanted to. As a mother, and as an empath, I could have played upon his fears, tried to keep him close, at least at my side. Royal Pain's attack had terrified me, and I'm sure I wasn't the only parent who suddenly wanted to stick their child in a safe place until they were forty or so. Even superhero parents can get overprotective. But I couldn't allow myself to do that. Warren was desperate to prove himself, to prove that he wasn't his father. He needed my help, my support, not my own fear. So I told him I was proud of him, that he could do it, that he could accomplish anything.

And despite everything that had happened initially with Tobias, I knew that the invitation at graduation had partially been to help Warren. Tobias had wanted Warren to have an unequivocally good experience with being a superhero. Specifically, being a superhero with _his_ family, so that Warren would want to stay. It had been a confidence booster, an ego stroke. Tobias obviously didn't know _what_ supervillains would choose to attack that week, but he knew there would be some, and with backup always in place in the form of his children, he could be fairly sure Phoenix would come out on top easily.

I had seen how nearly ebullient Warren had been after his first official fight, and perhaps I should have burst his bubble, at least a little. But I couldn't make myself. I hadn't seen him that unreservedly _happy_ ever in his life. Life would find a way of evening things out eventually, I told myself, and it had shortly after he returned to Maxville.

Had it been too much of a downer to be brought so violently back to earth after the fight with Flashpoint? All the good cheer he had had after the trip to Europe had suddenly vanished, replaced with a much more businesslike attitude. I was even proud of him for that, for realizing and acting to correct his own mistakes, but in retrospect I wondered if it had been too hard. In further retrospect, it had probably been because he was working side-by-side with a known supervillain.

The night Warren had confronted her, the supervillain Painbreaker; I could feel the emotion-storm from nearly across town, hard on the heels of him invoking his healing fire. Guilt and fear so thick and powerful it woke me out of a sound sleep and into a kind of waking nightmare. Having the phone ring was almost a relief, for at least I would find out what he had been up to for the past few months.

When I saw her though, I came as close to losing control as ever had been. When Warren told me what had been going on, I was so astonished I couldn't even speak. I was furious with him, that he had been working with a supervillain for so long without telling me or anyone else. I was angry, that he had misused his powers, his skills that _I_ had taught him, to hurt her. I was shocked that he had trusted her to not give away his identity. And above all, I was afraid for him.

I saw, in my mind's eye, everything that I had worked for during the past few years going up in smoke. If him or I were caught associating with supervillains again, for _any_ reason, the reaction of the superhero community would be terrible. Trust would be shattered and the ostracizing would begin again. They would see a repeat of the past; a failure of my powers, of Warren giving in to the evil they all assumed was inherent in him because of his father. I didn't think I could handle that again, not after Baron.

For the first time, I was harsh with Warren. I did not give him an ounce of sympathy. I told him the pure, undiplomatic truth and ordered him around like he was three years old. I was channeling to him, and I knew it, for he didn't even protest when I summarily told him what to do. He had expected help, sympathy, guidance, and some solution to the mess he had gotten himself into. I gave him none of that, and it killed me inside to see the wounds I gave him.

I couldn't even tell him the full reason for what I had done. I told him I had lost my temper, but I didn't tell him my fears. Would it have done him any good to know how close to the edge he was skating? I knew he would think of it for himself at some point, but would it be too late? All it would take was a single mistake; one of his friends catching sight of Monica while she was walking around town, and everything would come apart for him.

That was the second reason I was afraid for him, his friends. I had watched those tapes from last Homecoming over and over again, writing down what observations I could for the Bureau files. And so it didn't entirely surprise me when Zack showed up at my door one night a few weeks after they had returned from Yellowstone, a night when I knew _he_ knew Warren was at night class.

One of Zack's older sisters, Krystal, went by the Sidekick name of Switch, and had the power to turn electrical things on or off at a distance. She was partnered with Dynamotronic, a genius with a mechanical bent, helping him battle against evil geniuses with their own electronic toys. It was the lot of a Sidekick to often be the distraction, the decoy, or even the sacrifice so the hero could save the day. After one too many close calls had left her rattled, she had come to see me, not more than six months after I had gone active again. It had been a joy to use my powers to help again, and even if it hadn't been on the big scale I had been used to, I had been no less pleased to help her regain her nerve. So if _she_ had seen Zack faltering like she had been, she wouldn't have hesitated to point him my way.

It amazes me sometimes that no matter how much things change, they also remain the same in so many ways. It wasn't so terribly long ago that students in schools had so many more restrictions on how they could dress, talk, or act. And yet now that so many of those school-imposed restrictions are gone, students still have their _own_ restrictions they put on themselves. They must show the proper amount of "coolness" at all times, or suffer the consequences. Zack's own proper façade of infinite cool, agreeability, and nonchalance hemmed him in as much as my own son's stony walls of indifference had for so many years.

Whatever had gotten Zack to my door had required a huge sacrifice on his part. Proper teenage attitude didn't require help from grown-ups, and it certainly didn't acknowledge that the teenager had any problems that he couldn't solve himself. Self-reliant American mentality combined with macho male posturing topped with the inherent peer pressure of being cool. Without some kind of external prompting or internal revelation he probably would have gone until he snapped.

There had been no doubt in my mind what his problem was the moment I opened my door. It hadn't been more than a few weeks since he had fought Cutter and her crew, and even now I could still see the very faint scar on his cheek from where her knife had cut him. He wasn't any paler than normal, he hadn't lost any weight, or had any other signs of what I knew had to been nightmare-ridden sleep for the past few weeks. That must have been why Warren and the others hadn't picked up on it. But I could sense it; he was trembling and sharp inside with fear, with shame, and with other things he couldn't even name. But he didn't feel he could talk to Warren about this, or obviously he wouldn't be here.

I hadn't let him dangle; I brought him into the den the minute after I opened the door. What courage had brought him to me might fail if he had to try to speak things aloud on the doorstep. The fact that I already _knew_ what was going on, at a gut level at least, spared him the agony of full confession. _This_ was why I had gone back to helping superheroes, because sometimes the only people who would understand them were other superheroes. And understanding them without words helped more than most could articulate.

"Painbreaker?" I said to him, as soon as we had sat down. Zack nodded.

"And Cutter," he added.

"Nightmares?" I persisted. I remembered Warren had mentioned once that Zack didn't have to sleep very long, as some odd side effect of his powers, and anything that could disturb that short time of sleep must be very bad indeed.

"I just…" he paused, and I felt another wave of fear flood him. "I just _see_ them. In my head, all the time. It's stupid, you know?"

I extended a bare tendril of calm to him, slowly easing the fear a bit, giving him the ability to go on.

"You were brave, you know that," I told him as a statement of fact. All of Warren's friends had been brave, but even I had to admit that Zack had shown some of the most physical bravery of them all. He hadn't had Ethan or Magenta's ability to hide if cornered. Layla had been hidden in relative safety on the roof. Will had been flying, and would have been impervious to the kind of harm Zack had had inflicted on him. And Zack didn't have my son's indestructibility either.

Yet after being on the receiving end of an unusual power so intense it had knocked him out, he had come to in time to see his girlfriend nearly die. Then he had willingly left what protection he had to find her, and punched out a boy he _knew_ was poisonous to the touch.

"I… I keep thinking what's gonna happen when we fight them again," he said in a rush. "I want to hurt them, bad. I don't want to use a stun ray on them either. They hurt Magenta, they were going to hurt her more before the killed her, and me."

"You were being a good hero Zack. And you decided to come talk to me before upgrading your stun ray because you know it would be wrong," I told him quietly.

I saw him wince, then nod. How many young heroes had I counseled before I went inactive the first time? It must have been dozens, maybe even hundreds. Zack was not the first Sidekick to feel this way after his first fight. Relatively powerless, and sometimes run roughshod over by their Heroes, Sidekicks had been turned to supervillain minions before for just this reason.

With no options in a fight in-between nearly powerless attacks and something fully lethal, Sidekicks could go bad. And to strike back at the people that had hurt his girlfriend and himself so badly… it was only human. But heroes were expected to be superhuman. That was the crux of all of our problems.

I had to credit Zack for having the courage to take his sister's advice. Admitting to someone, perhaps even particularly someone like me, that you were willing to do deadly harm to a supervillain had to take guts. Slowly I convinced him that wanting that wasn't crazy, it was even natural. It took me a while, for he wasn't quite ready for me to use my powers. Unless someone was in a dire and immediate crisis, they didn't need me mucking around in their heart and soul. But words were my weapons, with my powers or without them, and even without them I could help him.

Warren even ended up helping, though he didn't even know it. Teaching Zack unarmed combat suddenly gave him a third option, something between an all-out lethal attack and subduing. It was strength, and given strength in body, came strength in mind and spirit. It's sometimes odd how something so simple can stop something so complex. I wasn't surprised when his nightmares stopped soon after.

I couldn't tell Warren about any of this though. What Zack had told me I would take to my grave. It was more private than a patient and a counselor, closer to a confessor and a priest perhaps. I could not break the oaths I had made to myself, not even to warn Warren how much he was risking. Zack, and all his friends, had geared themselves up to fight against Cutter's Crew. Did Warren realize how much of a betrayal this could seem? Perhaps intellectually he knew it, but not at gut level, not yet. For someone who felt things deeply, Warren could also sometimes keep things mentally at bay if he wasn't quite ready for them yet.

All this had run through my mind right after Warren had told me what had happened. And yet after I dismissed him to cover for Monica and finish his shift, things became even stranger. Knowing what I did about her and being able to tell what she was feeling enabled me to cut through much of the verbal song-and-dance we might have gone through. In between broken words of half-understood concepts, I learned what she knew, how she had survived, and why she had suddenly reached out to Warren, risking the wrath of the academy.

Her danger from them was far more then our danger to her. Yet Warren hadn't taken her in to the Bureau. Granted she had attempted to threaten him, and he had believed her, but nearly anyone else would have ignored her attempts at blackmail and brought her to justice. Will Stronghold would have. His parents _certainly_ would have. So would have the rest of Warren's friends, more or less directly. He hadn't. He believed her when she said she hadn't been doing any villainy. He actually answered his emergency phone in front of her. He had accepted her ride to his battles. He had been the first person to show her any hint of real trust in at least four years.

Four years, that was the problem. She had spent four years immersed in a deadly supervillain academy, and before that had spent far too much time shoving aside her feelings so she could use her powers as she thought she had to. As Warren had said, her actions, history, and words were all in conflict.

The reason was easy enough for me to see, though it had stolen my breath in fear when I first saw it. The mind is like a fortress of stone, each brick an experience, holding back raw instinct, the animal mind that comes forth in times of anger, fear, or stress. And at the core is the solid stone that forms our morality, our core values, what makes us more than animals, what makes us human. When I had seen Baron's mind for the first and last time, I could see his core rotted, parts deliberately excised in startling clarity, others crumbled away by sheer repetition. It was a horror, and I fled from it.

To see the same thing again… I might have fled her mind immediately, seeing that crumbling stone in the core of her mind, but I forced myself to look again. Monica had not yet deliberately committed murder, so perhaps something lingered in her core, something that stayed her hand. Something that would explain her odd desire to help in the face of working for our enemies.

There, deep in the crumbling stone, thinner by far than anything I had seen, was a second core, and not of stone, but of steel. These were what she had been protecting, but unable to use. The morality that lay closest to the bone and dearest to the heart, a gift of a loving and able guardian before disease had robbed her from Monica's life. Buried deep amongst her more conscious mind, hard to get to, but still there, it was something I could work with. I would not flee from her as I had from my husband.

When I asked her if I could help clear her mind and re-awaken what she had been trying to on her own, she had seemed confused. It's so _hard_ sometimes to explain exactly how the innermost part of the mind looks, particularly when it's someone else's mind. Emotionally, she wanted some kind of anchor, a solid place to stand. Warren had knocked all the pillars that had supported her worldview askew, and she was foundering. Things she thought were true weren't, and facts she had based her life on were revealed to be no more than lies.

 _What is real? What is truth?_ Universal questions were shouting from behind her eyes, and I could give her no more than the basest of answers.

"I can help you find your way. But it will hurt," I warned her.

"I'm not afraid of pain," was all she told me.

"You'll be afraid of this. But it will be better after, I can promise you that," I told her a little sadly. It was all the comfort I could give her, because no one could really prepare themselves for that kind of experience. She gave her mind over to my hands, and I went to work.

Destroying stone is hard, even if it's crumbling, for the rotted stone bastion around her core was everything she had for so long. To an outside observer, we sat in trance for several hours; Monica with tears running down her face, mine a mask of concentration. Inside the mental plane, I was using things like sunlight and storm, waterfall and rain to weaken, blast, and erode away a mentality based on years of lies. For me, all things mental come as pictures, sometimes with sounds or scents or even tastes. But in the constructs of the soul, I used the fury of nature to bring down a man-made edifice, finally exposing the slender and strong core beneath.

Having part of yourself ripped away is an ungodly painful experience, and I hugged Monica close to me as we broke our trance. Physical pain she had felt and shared in abundance. Emotional pain she had shut out years ago, and feeling it again had been above and beyond what she was capable of dealing with. Though Warren had started this pain and uncertainty, I had continued it. But I couldn't finish it.

Fear held me away from completing Monica's healing. She would need weeks of help, maybe even months or years. In truth, she should have kept coming to me as Zack had, for as long as she needed. But I couldn't do it. She couldn't be seen coming to my house. She obviously couldn't go to the Bureau. And any clandestine meeting might be found out eventually. What the Bureau would think about me meeting any supervillain secretly wasn't to be contemplated.

I admit; I passed the buck. I told Warren he would have to finish what I had started. I threw the whole problem back in his lap. Part out of anger, part out of fear, and part out of the genuine thought he should learn to reap what he had sown. He knew hero work didn't just involve punching the bad guy in the face, but it was sometimes harder to see from this close. He had to learn. She had to heal. And I was too afraid to take this on.

He can do it. He knows how. She wants to heal herself, and she'll help him help her. It won't be easy, but even with what consequences they both might face, I think they'll manage. I know myself to be too afraid to do this right. Warren can, I know it, and I even told him so and believed it in my heart.

But I'm still afraid for my son.


	34. Tempus Fugit

It had been a week since Monica's breakdown, and three days since Sky High had started classes again. Luckily, she had had two days off after that incident with the car wreck, two days to relax, to calm down, and to think. I'd needed the time too, but there was no way we could stall any further with purely concentrating on our cover job. I would end up saying something stupid, I was sure of it.

We were parked in our usual sector, an uncomfortable silence filling the car, the lack of sound almost hurting my ears. Monica was almost silently breathing, eyes closed, echoing at least a posture of calm I was very much envying right now. Working as a hero wasn't for the faint of heart, or weak of nerves, but I felt I had had quite a lot thrown at me in the last little while.

 _Or you could just be whining,_ my brain pointed out cheerfully. _Weren't you just saying you didn't mind hard work?_

 _Shut up,_ I told myself firmly.

"Do you really want out?" I asked finally into the awkward silence. It was the first time I had said anything directly related to last week's incident since it had happened.

"It's a little late to ask me that now, don't you think?" Monica pointed out. I dropped my eyes in embarrassment. Because I had asked Mom to help me, Monica could have found herself under arrest by the Bureau if Mom had reacted any worse than she had. And it wouldn't have taken much, I think.

"Yes, I want out," she said after another few moments, her voice firm and determined.

"So, what do you want to do now?" I ventured. Monica was quiet for another few minutes, but I could tell she was just thinking, figuring out how to say something.

"I don't want to be a supervillain, but I can't go public as a hero," she said reluctantly.

"Why not? There've been supervillains that have gone over to the good side in the past," I pointed out.

"If I turned my back on the academy, what's to stop people from thinking I might just turn my back on the Bureau again if things get too hard?" she said. _Well, she does have a point,_ I thought.

"I don't know. But you won't," I said. "And they'll have to believe you eventually."

"How would you-," she started heatedly, and then stopped when I gestured to myself. "Right. Ok," she sighed. "But going public would be too dangerous for me. You _know_ what the academy does to traitors."

Considering they had sent six people to kill Speed, Lash, and Penny, I could just imagine whom they might send to silence _her_. Those three hadn't even known that much about the academy, and I could guess they'd spare no effort to quiet someone who had actually been inside it, if that person decided to turn.

"Yeah…" I started.

"Do you realize that some of the supervillains Speed, Lash, and Penny have faced haven't just been committing crime in their neighborhood? Some have been bounty hunters. The academy put a price on their head after we failed to kill them," she pointed out.

"No," I said, and shook my head in half-disbelief, half-anger. _The academy is one sick and twisted organization._

"The academy hasn't sent any other graduates after them yet, but it's only a matter of time. But those three can practically smell danger, and they're used to looking out for it now. And there are three of them. They can watch each other's backs. There's only one of me, and I have to sleep sometime.

"Besides," she added with a sigh. "I kind of owe them."

 _"What?"_ I demanded, incredulous.

"They're the ones that took me in. I worked for them for four years. They trusted me, as much as they were able. The heroes won't, not for a long time," she said sadly.

"Trust is only as good to the person whom trust is given," I told her.

"That sounds like you got it out of a fortune cookie," she said, giving me a frank look.

Ok, I actually _had_ , but that wasn't the point. Just because I worked at a Chinese restaurant for about five years didn't meant I discounted fortune cookie wisdom. A lot of it _was_ good advice, and it didn't make it any less good for being wrapped in a semi-sweet cookie.

"So? It doesn't make it any less true. Those guys are liars and thieves, murderers, and you know it. You don't owe them anything. And they don't own you."

Monica looked out at some middle distance, thinking, and closed her eyes. After an uncomfortably long moment, she opened them again.

"You're right," she said firmly. I sighed in relief, and Monica smiled a bit, looking a little more relaxed.

"Good to know," I said finally. Monica smiled a little, seeming to understand. I kind of hoped I was right about _something_ in this mess that I had made.

"Look, I _can't_ go public as a hero. Even if the Bureau believed me, it's not their job to protect heroes. It's the heroes' job to protect _them_. If- _When_ the academy goes down, maybe I'll consider it, but… not now. I don't think I can hack it as a citizen anymore either." She didn't mention being a villain again, that was already over and done with.

"So, what?" I prompted. I was kind of fresh out of ideas. She took a deep breath.

"I've been helping you out. Can't I keep doing that?"

"What, like hero support?" I asked a little impishly. She gave me a rather disturbing dead-eyed glare, and I looked away first. _I probably shouldn't be teasing her right now._

"Sorry," I said quickly.

"I'm not going to prance around in tights as your Sidekick," she said. "First off, I'd die of embarrassment. Second off, that's hardly any less inconspicuous than going public as a hero. I've been helping get you to the villains, helping cover for you, can't I just keep doing things like that?" she asked.

"I think they call it 'Sidekick distraction,' not 'prancing,'" I corrected, smiling a little. Monica looked exasperated. "No reason why you couldn't keep helping me. I think I'm actually more used to having help now. But what about the academy?" I asked. She looked at me quizzically.

"What _about_ the academy?"

"Can you tell me things about them?" I asked cautiously. It was risky for both of us for several reasons, and I knew she had to know that. She pursed her lips in thought.

"If I do, can you give the information to others without revealing where it came from? They'll either start thinking you have a supervillain in your back pocket somehow, or that _you're_ the villain, if you aren't careful," she pointed out.

"I know… I think, maybe I can pass it off during brainstorming. Or if something comes up, maybe I can work it into the conversation. And if I can't…" Monica looked at me hard as I trailed off. "Then I won't say anything. I promise."

If I betrayed her, then I'd betray my mom and me as well. Even if I hadn't promised to help keep her existence a secret, I would have kept my mouth shut for that reason alone.

* * *

_**Three months and two and a half weeks after graduation, Warren's house** _

I decided that, within the bounds of my promise, I _had_ to figure out what my friends thought about all this, especially Will. There was one talent Will had, above and beyond his superpowers, that was going to make him one hell of a hero. He always made the right decision. Granted, he had to know a decision had to be made (which sometimes required a bright flashing sign, a map, and a guide, something even he admitted), but once there, he didn't hesitate. And considering how fast he could be, it was a damn good thing he tended to be right, because in a battle, we wouldn't be able to stop him.

Yeah, he saw things in shades of black and white, but sometimes I thought that was better than seeing every possible consequence in shades of gray and agonizing over each and every one. I was guilty of that one in spades. Layla wasn't always willing to use a solution that included violence, Ethan sometimes needed too much time to make any decision at all, Magenta was inclined to let some problems take care of themselves and charge into others full tilt, while Zack sometimes made decisions based on how cool something would appear. Nobody was perfect in everything, but I thought my friends would at least give me a more balanced idea of what I was doing.

It was Thursday afternoon, my house, our usual study session. However, myself, now no longer needing to take tests and quizzes, was acting as the teacher. Or at least I was prompting them with questions from the book. Since we were using my house, I exercised my host's rights to determine the order of study, starting with Moral Dilemmas. I had passed that class with flying colors, thanks to what my Mom had taught me, so in theory it was the best subject for me to teach. There was some brutal irony in there somewhere.

"Supervillain turning superhero," I started, while Zack and Will were still digging out pencils and paper. Ethan perked up and began flipping through his books, while Magenta tapped her lips with her pen.

"Like in the middle of a battle? Or something else?" she asked.

"Something else," I said confidently. "Say you know your villain's secret identity, he knows yours, and he tells you he wants to change." There had been more than one case like that over the years, so while I was atop dangerous ground, it was hardly unknown.

"Most of the time when you have sudden reformation cases it's usually because the former supervillain has been possessed, or under mind control, or has some kind of alien parasite," Ethan pointed out, writing notes down.

"Let's say they seem to have a genuine change of heart," I prodded.

"How would you tell? They could be lying through their teeth, wantin' to stab you in the back or something," Zack asked.

"Good point," Layla said thoughtfully, lying on her stomach. "Get a mind-reader maybe?"

"Say you can't, maybe there's none around," I said, turning the questions the way I needed them to go.

"Is this scenario in the book?" Ethan asked curiously.

"Yes," I said instantly, and flatly. Will looked at me a little oddly, but didn't say anything.

"So you're relying only on yourself?" Layla asked, and I nodded.

"See 'em in action," Zack said simply. "See what they do when the chips are down."

"Maybe you don't get a chance to," I said quickly. Ethan was frowning and flipping through his books, trying to find which problem I was reading from.

"So, they're talking to you while both of you are in cover, you don't have a mind-reader, _and_ you don't have time to see them in action? Is this one of the questions from the test?" Magenta demanded.

"Hey, I'm not going to give you guys _easy_ problems," I pointed out, and Magenta sighed in defeat.

"Give them a chance to prove themselves," Will piped up for the first time, looking thoughtful. "They might not be telling the truth, but you never know unless you give them a chance."

"Yeah, that's easy enough if you _can't be hurt,_ " Magenta quipped.

"I think Will's right, we should always give them a chance," Layla said more firmly, backing up Will's choice.

"What if they betray you?" Magenta continued. She generally enjoyed playing the devil's advocate in situations like this.

"It would really depend on the supervillain. If they're known as an evil genius, I think it's be really, really hard to trust them. But if they're like a henchmen or something, that's different," Ethan said, not looking up from his books. "I mean, if Royal Pain was asking-."

"Throwdown," Zack said quickly, and Ethan grinned.

"Right, I doubt any of us would believe her. But if it were like, oh um…"

"Bruin?" I suggested when Ethan stalled to think of a name. I didn't even want to _name_ Painbreaker, not even in a theoretical sense.

"Bruin," he repeated, nodding to me. "If it were him, he doesn't seem like the mastermind type, and he might be really telling the truth."

"Until he _eats_ you," Magenta pointed out.

"I wouldn't trust any of them man, most of those guys are crazy," Zack said with conviction. "Warped."

"So, no second chances?" Layla challenged.

"If they wanna prove they're all on the down low, come swoopin' in during a battle and save somebody. Actions man, actions speak louder than words," he said, not backing down a bit. "Not this whole 'come up to you during your off-day' stuff. I mean, you can't really answer that." Zack shrugged expansively and looked over at me.

_He's right, you know. You won't really know for sure until she's willing to take up arms against the academy._

_Shut it, Monica is already risking a lot by talking to me..._

_Just keep telling yourself that Hothead,_ my brain taunted. Great, now my own subconscious was calling me by Boomer's nickname.

"Anything else?" I asked the rest of the gang, and got a bunch of headshakes in response. They would have to answer more thoroughly on the test, but I knew this would never be used at Sky High. So the gang might not ever trust Monica unless she was ready to do something physical to be a hero. And that might be never. I resolved to try to keep my mouth shut about it from now on.

"Ok, so there's a supervillain on a bridge…"

* * *

_**Three months and three weeks after graduation, amublance, Sixth and Main** _

"You have a headache," Monica said the moment I got in the ambulance. Since I had one hand on my temple and a pained expression on my face, I wasn't particularly impressed. She didn't need her powers to tell her that.

"Your powers of deduction are staggering," I snapped, sliding the bundle of papers I had brought with me into my bag.

"Any particular reason?"

"I was picking up my mail at the Bureau. They have a lot of mind readers. I was keeping up my walls, and I'm a little out of practice," I said shortly. Maintaining my firewall wasn't automatic, nor was it easy, and I had been uncomfortably remembering Ms. Olsen's words that mind readers at the Bureau might try to check up on me from time to time. But I had to get my fan mail from Mandy, not to mention anything else I might get that was too sensitive to trust to the post office.

"Ah, well then if you're going to be grumpy all day…" Monica trailed off as I dropped my hand and started to root through my bag for some painkillers. Then she reached out and touched me on the temple with two fingers. Before I could protest, I realized the headache was gone, just as if someone had flicked off a switch.

"Um…" I said after a few seconds. "Thanks." That was the first time she had every really offered to do anything like that for me, and I was understandably startled. _It's a good thing sign though, isn't it? Willing to take on someone else's pain after all she's been through?_

"Don't mention it," she said, and took her hand away. Faint shadows danced across her forehead and eyes as she kept her powers invoked, nearly invisible in the late-afternoon sunlight. "So, what mail do you get that the Bureau has to hold?"

"Fan mail," I said, pulling the papers back out of my bag. It wouldn't hurt to let her look at them; as far as I was concerned, fan mail was one of the huge perks to being a superhero. I read them first, and then handed them over to Monica. She laughed a little at the ones from the kids, smiled at the ones from the adults, and choked at the rabid fangirl letters.

"No wonder you do this," she said very softly, so softly I wasn't sure I had heard her right. She put each letter back with care, and I caught her expression. It was oddly sad, and her eyes were suspiciously bright. I looked away quickly before she could see me peeking, and read the last letter. I smiled broadly at it, because this one was from Thomas. I wasn't quite sure what had made her upset, but maybe this might cheer her a bit.

"It's from my cousin, he's eight," I said casually, tapping it. "He just powered up a few months ago, he said he'd write me. He said he managed to set the dining room table on fire before some big dinner party the other week, and they ended up having to serve it on tables they scavenged from all over the estate. And then no one could remember where they all went, so they've been swapping them around for a week."

A bunch of other little mishaps and misadventures followed, hilarious for an eight-year-old, but a little more charming to me, particularly after he had mentioned he was following Phoenix in the super-news. I was actually kind of touched that he'd remembered to write. I had liked reading well enough when I was that little, but writing had been a pain, and Thomas had written a small novel, by eight-year-old standards.

Monica listened, a faint ghost of a smile coming back to her face before I was through.

"Nice kid," she commented. "Must be nice to have fans."

"Yeah, it is. It's… a big reason of why I do this," I told her. Monica looked very thoughtful for the rest of the night, but a few times I thought I caught her wiping her eyes. I did the only thing I thought I could, and didn't say a word about it.

We talked a lot in the next several of months, about our powers, about ethics and morals, about what it was like to be a good guy. It was probably the most intense questioning of what exactly I was doing that I had ever done. Our final essay of "Why I Want To Be A Hero" had nothing on this.

"How do you usually use your powers in a fight?" was the first question I had asked her when she wondered how she was supposed to use her powers for good.

"I was partnered with Cutter because someone has to be hurt before I can use my powers. So I waited until she cut someone, then used my powers to enhance it until the person stopped, collapsed, or fainted. Wash, rinse, repeat until all enemies are down. And if it wasn't Cutter, then I had to wait until someone else hurt the enemies. Or I had to do it myself. I'm not a kung-fu artist or anything, I just have to get close enough to scratch someone, and then I have a foothold," she explained. It was something of a conundrum on how she could make that work in a heroic context, and I reluctantly said as much.

"Well, how do you use _your_ powers?" Monica asked in exasperation.

"Wing people, for the most part. If they're tough, I can pour on the flames, but if I'm facing someone that's not fireproof, I can either try to scare them into backing down or… I have to hurt them," I told her.

It was one of the things that sucked about my power, that I had truly hated about it before I had discovered the ember-fire. If I powered up normally, the only thing I could do was hurt people. Most people didn't realize how hard it was to _not_ hurt someone with pyrokinesis. Boomer had basically told me, as well as other 'kinetics in the school, that using our powers responsibly was basically knowing when _not_ to use them, or where to hit when you did.

Cryokinetics had it a lot easier. They could freeze the ground and have their opponent sliding around, or freeze weapons or armor into immovability. Electrokinetics could shock their foes into tetany. But pyrokinesis tended to be the most destructive because fire had a way of growing and feeding on itself. A single battle with a pyrokinetic could leave a city in charred ruins if things got out of hand. The other 'kinetic powers didn't do that nearly so much. Sure, I could heat up armor or weapons like a cryo, but the damage from fire was so much faster than the damage from cold. And once a fire got started, most pyrokinetics didn't have any control over it. There were very few fire controllers (like Crimson Tempus), and if no one was around to control it, a simple small fire made to scare could turn into an inferno.

I could hem people in with flame to frighten them, but that wasn't always an option. Sometimes the only way to stop someone was to burn them. If the person wasn't tough, I had to pick my targets with care, somewhere non-vital but damaging. But it still meant I had to hurt people.

"That's actually kind of comforting to know. My powers _hurt_ , but they don't actually leave scars," she said. I clenched my fist at that, my jaw tight. I had already had to scorch more than one villain to stop them, and I was uncomfortably aware that was exactly what my dad, and all his relatives, had to do too. If I had only known my dad out of all of my relatives, I think I would have been a lot more screwed up about it, but after meeting the rest of his family, it had made it a lot more bearable.

"Sorry," she added, after seeing my face.

"It's ok. I deal with it," I said, sighing. Then I shook my head.

"Duh, you can do what _I_ can," I said, nearly smacking my forehead as the answer came to me. Monica looked blank for a moment, and then realized what I was getting at.

"Winging people? That's what I should be doing?"

"Makes sense. You said you could stop nearly anyone in their tracks with what you can do. Don't hold your powers on them, just make them think twice before running," I elaborated.

"It's only effective when I'm actually _using_ them though," she pointed out reluctantly.

"Hey, if you can get someone to just pause, that's enough," I said. "That's what Zack, Ethan, and Magenta do."

I had decided, though not without some trepidation, to not beat around the bush when it came to talking about my friends. Most of my examples of stuff came from them, and trying to dance around the subject would have gotten really ridiculous after a while. I wasn't going to give out addresses or anything, but I could at least let her know their first names and what they could do.

" _If_ I have someone else around to give me a foothold," she countered.

"You said you wanted to work with me, right?" I pointed out jokingly. "I mean, when the academy finally goes…"

Monica got a look of shock on her face when I said that.

"You really mean that?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess I do…" I said, realizing, with some surprise, that I actually did. No one else would know about her when the academy was finally taken down. I would be the only one who knew her well enough to trust her. If she couldn't work with me, where _would_ she go? I had basically kicked her out of one world, so it was my responsibility to open up the other to her. _Huh, I guess I really_ do _mean that._

* * *

_**That evening, Warren's house** _

"How's it going?" Mom asked the minute I walked in the door. Things between Mom and I weren't exactly strained, but I could tell she was very much on edge from what I was doing. That made two of us. It was scary, trying to help fix someone's entire worldview, knowing that if I messed up, I probably wouldn't have much time to bemoan the consequences.

I wasn't even up for giving Mom a blow-by-blow, so I did the only other thing I could. I held out my hands to her, silently telling her to read me for herself.

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking a little sad.

"Yeah, I really can't do this twice in one night," I said, and Mom gave me a hard hug, letting her powers tell her without words what I was doing.

"Warren, you're really doing fine," she said, after a minute. "I'm sorry I'm having you do this on your own-."

"I know, I messed up, I got to fix it," I interrupted. Mom shook her head for a moment, and then sighed.

"You're handling it very well, Phoenix," she said in a queerly formal manner.

Weird.

* * *

_**Four months after graduation, the morning after Homecoming, Medic-Co parking lot** _

"Huh, I was expecting there to be some kind of big thing. Supervillain scheme, someone trying to blow up the city, sewers imploding, or something like that," I said idly. Surprisingly, for the first time in two years, Homecoming night had _not_ involved a prolonged battle with supervillains. Phoenix hadn't gotten any kind of call at all, not exactly typical, but somewhat uncommon. I wasn't getting a "night off" more than once or twice every two weeks.

"Count your blessings," Monica suggested with a somewhat sardonic glance.

"Good point."

* * *

_**Four and a half months after graduation, Sky High gym** _

"Dudette, not comfortable being grabbed there!" Zack yelled as Layla's vines wrapped him up. Layla abruptly turned a brilliant scarlet, and the vines retracted at light speed. Zack was blushing, Magenta was glaring, Will was attempting to hold in laughter with both hands, and Ethan pretended the whole subcontext of the conversation was beyond him.

* * *

_**Four months and three weeks after graduation, Warren's house** _

We had been waiting for the other shoe to drop about the academy for months. We had expected explosions, world domination attempts, or something like that. Instead we had gotten nearly five months of very eerie silence. I hadn't pressed Monica for information yet; I didn't want to make her angry by blatantly trying to trade on her inside knowledge. But maybe after today I might have a direction to try. Will had called a meeting for today, claiming he had something new about our erstwhile foes, and had also commandeered my sanctum for it. I had tried to protest, but Will had pointed out that I was the only one of the group that had my own, even if I was sharing it.

Still.

I let the rest of the gang start hauling food down there, threatening them with torture-by-Trixie if they got anything on Mom's half of the sanctum, while I tried to finish up some last-minute repairs to my costume. I refused to let any of my friends see me sew; I had _some_ standards. The doorbell rang just as I was tying off the last knot, and I quickly stuffed everything in the closet. They never told you how high-maintenance those super-suits were in high school…

I shouldn't have been surprised really, but when I opened the door to see who was there, I just stood there in shock for a second.

"Principal Powers?" I asked dumbly.

"In the flesh. Didn't Will tell you I told him to call the meeting?" she said with a smile as she stepped in.

"I think it slipped his mind," I said, mentally resolving to sic Trixie on him at the earliest opportunity. Surprise visits were never really my thing, and that went triple at this point in my life.

"Well, at least he remembered to call it at all. And Warren, I'm not your principal anymore, you can call me Veronica," she said as we started walking downstairs. I must have looked really uncomfortable, because she quickly added, "Or Ms. Powers, if you prefer."

_You're an adult, Peace. She's a peer hero now, not one of your teachers._

"Veronica," I asked, feeling a little self-conscious, "what's going on with the academy?"

"Quite a bit," she said, nodding to everyone as we entered the sanctum. Principal Powers, Veronica (it was going to take some getting used to even thinking about her by her given name) took one of the better chairs by the computer, while everyone else had pulled folding chairs out of the closet. I stood in the back, arms crossed, suddenly feeling a distinct gap between my friends and me.

Having Prin- _Veronica_ ask me to call me by her first name suddenly brought home the fact that I was passing into the responsibilities of not just being a superhero, but being an adult as well. I had a full-time job and then some, my own place, technically, (I had started paying Mom rent so I wouldn't feel so much like some slacker college leech), and even my own sanctum. I wasn't involved so closely with all the little things that were so important in high school, and even though the gang kept me forcibly up-to-date on everything at Sky High, my priorities were shifting a lot faster than they realized.

It wasn't like they weren't still my friends. And hell, they were only two years younger than me! It was just that it wasn't ever going to be quite the same, even when they all graduated. Things were going to change, maybe not a lot, but it was going to happen. It was happening right now, right in front of me, and it wasn't easy or comfortable to practically _see_ yourself growing up.

Trixie had managed to follow me down to the sanctum (how she got past the biometric scanner was a mystery I had never been able to uncover) and seemed to sense my blue mood even before I realized I was depressing myself. She leapt into my arms and lay there purring as I wrenched my attention back to the here-and-now. Having a purring cat in your arms practically prevents you from being blue.

"I finally have some firm information about what's happening with the academy. However, there's only so much I'm allowed to tell you at this point, I'm sure you understand," she started.

"Plausible deniability?" Ethan hazarded, as Pri- Veronica shook her head.

" _Something_ like that. Also, _I_ am not terribly high up on the notification list, you see. But here's what I know. The Bureau has managed to get five people inside the academy."

"Whoa!" "Dude…" "How?" "Who?" Considering how much trouble the Bureau had gone to for nothing last time, this was great news!

"Three shapeshifters and two with mental powers. The exact how and whom I don't know, and it's probably just as well. What I don't know, I can't be forced to reveal. They've uncovered some horrors… I won't go into detail, but suffice to say the academy students are prepared to fight and to fight dirty. However, most of the graduates have left the school to study abroad. It's some kind of graduate work under the wing of more experienced supervillains."

"Ouch," Zack said, wincing, and Veronica nodded.

"We don't know why they suddenly switched from using groups to farming out individuals, but we _do_ know several of the supervillains who are 'mentoring.' We think we're going to get some more vicious attacks on their behalf, and we're warning everyone. Right now, that's the best we can do on that front. What our insiders are also doing is trying to sabotage the training as best they can without getting caught."

"Oh man," Will said softly. The danger there was astronomical, and I could tell everyone in the room was feeling a surge of fear for our unknown spies.

"I know," Veronica said, catching all of our eyes in turn. "You're going to be battling this on one front, but they'll be trying to help take it down on another. It look Royal Pain over twenty years to build this academy, and I hope it doesn't take us another twenty to stop it."

I resolved, bruised pride, latent conflicting loyalties or not, I was going to have to figure out some way of broaching this to Monica. The insiders were going to need all the help they could get, and there was one person who could help them.

* * *

_**Five months after graduation** _

I was rudely jerked out of my healing trance by a flash of pain between my temples from a pain-enhanced scratch. I came to myself with a start, Monica taking her hand away from my head. Below me, the boy coughed and resumed breathing, his ribs looking far less squashed now. Considering he had fallen two stories while trying to escape his burning apartment, he was lucky to be alive. He still looked hurt, but at least he could breathe now.

"That's enough, he'll live," she said, patting me on the shoulder. I took a deep breath to clear my head, and began helping him in a more mundane way by patching up his wounds and putting in an IV.

Between the conversations I had had with my mom, my lessons at school, the talks with Monica, and my own desire for help, we had finally come up with some agreed-upon rules for using my healing power in public. Throttling down the ember-fire around people that had been in car wrecks, building fires, or other accidents was incredibly hard and tended to lead to a migraine.

I really couldn't afford to have one of those if I was suddenly called to battle a supervillain, but I _hated_ not being able to help those people that were right in front of me. Yes, we had to expect that sometime, some case, _someone_ was going to die on us, no matter what efforts we put into it. No one ever wanted it to happen, and everyone fought for their patient's every breath and heartbeat, but sometimes people were just too damaged to save.

I think I might have done something really dumb before the year was out, if it had just been me. I might have healed someone down to the dregs of my strength and had nothing left to fight crime, or I would have caused a round of questions that couldn't have been answered if people on the brink of death suddenly started arriving at the ER in perfect health. If Monica hadn't been my partner, I'm certain I would have done that more than once.

However, she was a lot more cautious than me, and a lot more paranoid. And she had put some of that in perspective when, shortly after the confrontation with my mom, I nearly pulled the same stupid stunt again in trying to help an injured bike rider. Monica had smacked me out of that trance as well, but had the same good reason she had done so the last time.

Sometimes I'm a slow learner.

"Look Warren, people lived even through car wrecks long before you were born. Maybe I can't heal flesh, but I can patch it, and you can help people the old-fashioned way too, you know. You can do this healing thing, but the city needs you saving the lives of dozens of people from psychos like me rather than patching up people one at a time," she had said.

"You aren't a psycho," I said unthinkingly. Monica drew up short at that, but then the rest of her statement started to get through my brain. It was a classic superhero dilemma, saving the many versus saving the few. And even though I found it annoying that a former supervillain was acting as my conscience, she had a very good point.

So we made an agreement, if I ending up _having_ to heal someone, Monica had the final say on how much, enforcing it by using her powers on me. As Ethan had said, physical pain overrode mental compulsion, and as my mom had said, I needed someone around me to shake me out of my healing trance. Monica didn't _have_ to do that, any more than she _had_ to subject herself to coming to grips with what she had been doing for the last four years. But she was doing it anyway. It was about then that I decided this might actually work out.

I was honestly starting to trust her judgment, to think of her as more than a partner, more than a project. I was thinking of her as a friend. And she was trusting me too, more than just the fact that I wouldn't turn her in. She trusted my knowledge of what was right, but also wasn't afraid to call me on things when she thought I was slipping. She didn't blindly follow my lead in things, but had plenty of ideas and questions of her own.

I hated to test our relatively fragile friendship with something I knew was going to be very personal and very touchy, but the week after Veronica Powers had updated us on the academy, we started to see Royal Pain's students popping up everywhere. Bruin showed up partnered with the Caveman, Viper with the Snake Charmer, and Bloodtalon with Killraven. Ethan had also spied several others that were probably the offspring of one villain or another, their academy training made clear in their rather ruthless attacks on whatever law enforcement or superheroes they faced. They were also absolute geniuses for getting away, pulling Houdini-like escapes if they were captured, which was maybe only one out of every five times.

It wasn't like the crime rate had taken a huge spike or something. The presence of the academy-trained supervillains (or henchmen) seemed to be more for the fact that they absolutely delighted in taking down more police, SWAT, or superheroes than their counterparts. It had only been a short time, but it seemed that they liked creating as much mayhem and injury as possible, and their original intentions of robbery or whatever be damned. And that was disturbing.

"Of course it is, disturbing is practically the academy motto," Monica had said, when I had broached, in extreme hesitation, a request for her to tell me a little more about the academy.

"We were told… there were 'horrors' at the academy, something about the training. You told me you just had to endure it. What… _how_ were they teaching you?" I asked finally. Monica swallowed hard, but finally nodded and took a deep breath. Since I was basically laying out most of my own psyche for the two of us to pick over so we could find what would work for _her,_ she knew she owed me And she knew that _this_ was going to come up eventually.

"Let me tell you a little about it," she started, almost like a storyteller. "In the academy, you walk the halls at your own peril. You have to fight to first blood in gym class every single day, and if you managed to mess someone up while they're unaware, like walking to class or their room, you might have a better chance of getting through the day uninjured."

"Wait, you had daily… _cage fights?!_ " I asked incredulously.

"Basically," she nodded.

"And you ambushed each other on the way to class?"

"Or the cafeteria, or the dorms, or anywhere else. The hallways were a no-man's-land. You had to be too strong, too important, or too scary to fight. I was one of the scary ones," she said matter-of-factly. I nearly exploded.

 _"That's insane!"_ Monica sat quietly while I got my temper back under control.

"Of course it's insane. And it was safer if we _were_ insane, because sane people couldn't stand that for long," she said bitterly. "You saw what they did to me. There _are_ psychics in the academy, mostly the teachers, but they don't waste time trying to put lessons in your head or things like that. I actually didn't even know what they _did_ , right up until about two months ago."

"Backlash," I stated, suddenly realizing what she was getting at. "They did that to you on purpose."

"And not just me. I've been thinking about it. Nearly everyone in my group wasn't exactly the safest person to be around in the first place, but after a few years in the academy, they went from being just a little on the wild side to full-on crazy. Like Skybolt? He's a weather controller, but the academy is underground. I think they kept him away from the sky too long. And Cutter was always pretty cruel, but she became a complete sadist after a few years. I think… crazy people are easier to control. Just let figure out what their obsessions are and let them rip," she said, her voice harsh as she gave voice to something repressed for far too long.

 _They're making their students crazy on purpose?_ I knew now why Veronica Powers had called the academy training 'horrors.' _God, if the superheroes knew, they'd go running in the front door like a bunch of morons. No wonder they need to use the insiders to take it down. I have to figure out some way to tell them, to warn them about it. Maybe anonymous tips or something…_

"I'm really glad you're out of there," I said after a long moment, and meaning it.

"You have no idea," she whispered. She looked terribly alone right then, and I slowly reached over and squeezed her hand. If I had been in her situation, I probably would have been waking up with screaming nightmares for the rest of my life. Telling me about it must have been a little like reliving it, and I owed her for that.

"Thanks," she said after a long moment.

"Anytime," I said, and smiled at her.

* * *

_**Five months and a week and a half after graduation** _

After a lot of back-tracking, anonymous tipping through at least eight different sources, and excruciatingly careful dropping of hints to my friends, my friends' parents, Principal Powers, my mom, and Mandy Mayweather, I had managed to get Monica's information through to the Bureau, and from there, hopefully to the spies at the academy. It had taken all the sneaky skills I possessed (and some I didn't know I had), to do it, and I felt like I had just tapped out at least a year's worth of good luck in managing to keep my source a secret.

The academy henchmen were still in the news, but now they were more scattered across the world, as if they were trying to get their influence as wide as possible. At least, in my selfish mind, they couldn't take as hard a toll on any one country that way. And oddly, despite their attacks in nearly every major city (which, to be fair, sometimes had four attacks a week, even in fairly quiet times), none had been in Maxville. Well, Monica had said they were crazy, but they probably weren't stupid. Attacking the Commander and Jetstream's hometown would have been the height of insanity, even for them.

* * *

_**Six months after graduation, Sky High gym** _

"Creosote?" I asked incredulously. "Like what they use on railroad ties?"

"Mom brought some plants back from Arizona, and I thought maybe some of these might help," Layla said a little diffidently.

"I get the cactus, but why creosote?" I asked again.

"It's resinous," she explained, and I almost hit myself for being stupid.

"Flammable," I translated, smiling crookedly. Oh, there was a lot of potential there!

"So if we need to get your fire somewhere where you don't have a clear shot, we can use this, kind of like a fuse," she finished. Something brought me up short though.

"You're actually willing to let me _burn_ one of your plants?" I pressed. "Stronghold, is your girlfriend a pod person?"

"No!" Layla exclaimed indignantly before Will could even answer. Ethan and Zack looked like they were about to jump in about my precise use of a sci-fi reference, but Layla kept going before they could interrupt. Probably just as well.

"Any one you can burn, I can grow two more. It's… well, you or Will might get shot at or things thrown at you. And I guess… this is my way of -."

"Taking one for the team?" Will finished. Layla nodded, looking determined.

"Aww, that was adorable! Now the real question is can you not manage to wrap yourself up again? Because you totally need to work on your self-defense," Magenta said, a broader smile taking the sting away from the sarcastic words.

"Chick-fight!" Zack crowed enthusiastically, and stepped away from the girls.

They both shot him withering glances but otherwise ignored him. Ethan, Will, and I joined him as Magenta and Layla circled each other. Layla had given in to the inevitable and started joining Magenta at her sensei's dojo. How she had managed to get that past her mom, I wasn't sure, but I think Principal Powers had been forced to get involved at one point.

That might have left Ethan as the only person on the team that couldn't defend himself without his powers, but Will had finally bitten the bullet and talked to him about it. Since I wasn't at school anymore to keep everyone in line, so to speak, Will had gotten a little more assertive and protective. The horror stories I trotted out about some of the villains I had faced, only slightly embroidered to make them a bit scarier, had helped. I hadn't exactly felt really comfortable in attempting to freak out my friends, but while Will or I could recover from being overconfident, a stupid mistake could cost the others a lot more.

Predictably, Will's plea for Ethan to just "try to learn a little self-defense" had ended up including Chloe. Somehow. I was getting convinced that if Ethan hadn't been so very much on the side of good, he'd have made a great evil genius, because he was managing to keep Chloe from figuring out he was a superhero-in-training through a web of clever deceptions that was rivaling anything I was doing. He had managed to get her to teach him a few karate moves, and actually was starting to _not_ lose to Zack every time we sparred.

As Layla and Magenta circled each other, us guys watched with rapt attention. It, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that they were wearing more-or-less form-fitting workout gear. Nothing at all.

"I bet Chloe could take Magenta in a fight," Ethan said casually, as Magenta slid forward, throwing a flat punch that Layla barely spun away from.

"Dude, no way! Your girl's got height, but mine's got moves!" Zack protested. Well, he was right on that account. Chloe was a truly ridiculous six foot, eleven inches tall, a height she exaggerated by tending to wear high-heeled shoes or tall boots. I really didn't know how Ethan dealt with it, considering he was barely five foot four, but he seemed to get a real kick out of it. Me, I'd have felt a little awkward if my girlfriend was nearly two feet taller than me.

"But Chloe's been in training longer than Magenta," Ethan said patiently.

"Magenta'd run in circles around her, she'd never be able to find her," Zack said. Will winced as one of Layla's return kicks overbalanced while when Magenta shifted, then cheered when Layla ran vines all over the ground, so when Magenta shifted back, she was entangled by them.

"Layla could take both of them," Will said firmly, and both Ethan and Zack turned on him.

While the rest of the guys wrangled over how "my girlfriend could beat up your girlfriend," I idly wondered how Monica might fare in our little theoretical throwdown. She wasn't much of a fighter, but then again she didn't have to be. She could make even a little hit hurt a lot, which might give her an advantage… Then I took my thoughts firmly in hand and squashed them. One, Monica wasn't my girlfriend, she was just my friend. Two, if the rest of the gang found out, I very much doubted it would be just the girls who would come after her.

* * *

_**Nine months after graduation, ambulance, Sixth and Main** _

"The Wolf Pack?" I asked a little desperately, hanging up my phone.

"Werewolves. Or rather, shapeshifters that look a lot like werewolves. They go in for the whole 'murder and mayhem' bit. It's a full moon; they're on the hunt," Monica explained. I had called Ethan the previous three nights in a row for some help after an emergency call, and tonight he just hadn't answered his phone. He was probably sleeping the dead sleep of the chronically sleep-deprived, poor guy. In desperation, I had asked Monica for help. I didn't ask her very often, because she was understandably reluctant, even now, and I tried to respect that.

"That's just great -," I started. Just at that moment a werewolf went flying past the windshield, as if it had been hurled. It was followed a second later by a large wave of water. Some part of me that wasn't laughing recognized Ethan's dad Tsunami.

"Werewolf," Monica said in bemusement. Two seconds later the werewolf went flying in the _other_ direction, again followed by Tsunami a moment later.

"Another werewolf," she commented.

"Actually, I think that was the same one," I said, grabbing the rest of my costume as the remainder of the Pack came galloping behind Tsunami.

_Three minutes later…_

"Hey Tsunami! Need a hand?"

"Sure thing kid." I let the "kid" remark pass unchallenged. Mr. Howard _was_ old enough to be my dad. "I'll soak 'em, you toast 'em!"

_Five minutes later…_

"Bad dog, no biscuit!"

_Fifteen minutes and a lengthy wrestling match later…_

"I said _bad dog!"_

_Two minutes later…_

Wet wolves smell a lot like wet dogs. But worse. And scorched wet dogs smell worse than simply wet dogs. Not to mention they did a number on my costume.

_Five minutes later…_

"Warren, I really don't know why you felt the need to go wrestle werewolves."

"It was either that or have them go running through downtown. At least between Tsunami and me we got them rounded up."

"While I'm sure your fan club will spontaneously explode from the pictures they're going to get from this, but, for the love of God, put a shirt on!"

I finally had time to take a better stock of my costume. I had been clawed and bitten so much I hadn't realized my costume had been taking more of a beating than I had. Embarrassingly less than half of it was intact. I grabbed for my citizen clothes and did the fastest quick-change I ever had in my life, furiously attempting not to blush.

"By the way," Monica added from the front, politely not looking my way. "It's a damn good thing I had front row seats for this fight, or I would have thought you were getting killed out there."

I blinked at the implications of that. Monica had mentioned that she could feel when I was getting hurt, but she sounded genuinely _concerned_ for me right then.

* * *

_**Two weeks later, Maxville Bureau Headquarters, communications department** _

"Phoenix, I think I'm going to forbid you from doing any kind of hand-to-hand from now on. Your fan mail volume tripled after people started posting those pictures of you from the Wolf Pack fight online," Mandy said, crossing her arms in mock-fury.

"I'll make sure all my supervillains fill out their Intention to Attack forms in triplicate," I said, rolling my eyes and picking up the folders.

"Your fan clubs are getting desperate. You _have_ to pick one to be your official one or otherwise it's going to start getting nasty," she reminded me. While I liked the fan mail, even the ones from the rabid fangirls, I was still somewhat reluctant to write _back_ to the kinda-crazy ones.

"Ok, ok, I'll do it," I said finally.

Mandy held out a pen and paper, and it was clear she wasn't intending to let me leave until she had gotten a letter out of me. I finally gave in, and a half-hour later had given my official blessing to the Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix PhanClub. Name aside, they were the one with most of the artists, the goods ones, and at least their website was cool.

"Ah, I was guessing you'd pick that one," Mandy said, giggling slightly as she addressed the letter.

"What's so funny?" I asked her.

"Oh, Phoenix, Arizona petitioned the Bureau to have you assigned to their city. But then the Bureau reminded them of what happened the _last_ time they had someone with fire powers. They got in a fight with Fire Storm and burned down half the city. And then they shut up," she said. "Fashion over common sense, like most of the fans."

 _Man I'm glad I wasn't there for_ that _conversation…_

* * *

_**Eleven months after graduation, ambulance, Sixth and Main** _

"Did you _ever_ want to be a villain?" I asked Monica seriously one day.

"Once," she said thoughtfully. "For about six weeks before they sent us after Speed, Lash, and Penny. After that… it was mostly just enduring what they had us do."

I didn't say anything else, just raised an eyebrow, and Monica sighed and tried to explain.

"It was… the idea that you could just go out and do what you want with no consequences. It's a five-year-old's dream, I know, but sometimes it can be really attractive. And also? You guys get paid."

"Huh?" I asked intelligently.

"You guys get paid, the Bureau pays you. Crime only pays if you steal. That's why so many supervillains are thieves or mercenaries. Or frauds, like Royal Pain. Or those with inherited money. Nefarious plots can't be done without some kind of funding. And I wasn't too likely to become a hero. So… there was that," she said with a small shrug. "The academy only encouraged so much thinking. You get to thinking about _consequences_ and worrying about what might happen to you… And generally they'd end up in a room alone with me."

She swallowed kind of hard, but I didn't say anything. She'd have plenty of time to regret what she'd done for the academy, and didn't need any of my help in guilt-tripping her. She was getting pretty good at doing that on her own.

"It was also supposed to be my destiny, according to Royal Pain," she added softly.

"Because of your powers?" I prompted.

"That too. And… because of my family," she explained. I started to get a rather sour feeling in my stomach. "She told me my grandfather was the Grim Reaper."

 _Hell… the last person known to have her kind of powers?_ It vaguely made sense… The Grim Reaper had been defeated and dropped out of sight almost forty years ago. Monica told me her grandfather had died in the seventies. _But isn't that just a little too pat, too neat?_

"However, I also am now of the opinion that Royal Pain is a lying sack of -," she broke off, and shook her head. "I think it was just one more reason to get me into the academy. She liked having a lot of control over us, and she had less over me than she had over Bruin before she trotted out _that_ little 'factoid.' I didn't want to tell you before; it was too stupid to mention."

"Yeah," I said, and almost laughed. If Royal Pain had been nearly ready to enroll back into Sky High when she was recruiting Monica and the others, she must have been laying on the bullshit a little thick to get them under her control in time.

"Besides, what I told you before was the truth, about how I got my powers. It makes a lot more sense that way," she pointed out. She had told me that she had been in town when a toxic waste truck had overturned near her school, and probably that was the reason she had gotten her powers. She was only the most recent in a long line of superheroes to get her powers that way, and combining the exposure to toxic waste with the stress of her grandmother's illness made a classic combination for the development of her powers the way they had. We were both quiet for a minute before Monica broke the silence again.

"Did you always want to be a hero?" she asked me in turn.

"Basically. Really seriously after I met my dad though. He just pissed me off so much… I wanted to do something so people wouldn't look at me like I was him. I wanted to redeem my family, I guess even more than I wanted to help people. But then I fought Royal Pain with Will and the gang, and I figured out I had more than one reason to do it," I explained.

"And you don't mind throwing yourself into deadly danger on a regular basis to rescue strangers?" she asked.

"It's all part of it. I mean, you've seen my fan mail. I'm really helping people," I pointed out. Monica nodded, but she was also frowning.

"But why be so reactive?"

"Reactive?" I asked.

"You sit around and you wait for that phone to ring. A supervillain just has to go and do his thing, and then you come in later and clean up the mess. Why don't you fix it _before_ it becomes a mess?"

That was a hard question to answer. I remembered thinking, before fighting against Cutter's Crew last fall, that we should have found a way to ambush them. I thought that the unwritten rules of the superhero world were too confining and ridiculous, and would end up getting us into more trouble than we could handle.

I wasn't the first hero to think that, nor probably would I be the last. More than one of our teachers had addressed that issue, which was kind of eerie at the time. Then again, since Ms. Olsen had been teaching a lot of it, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. A lot of it had to do with image, and a lot more with fair play. Reputation played a big part in it, as did what citizens expected us to do.

"So much of heroics is not just saving people or property, but doing it in the right way. It's not just swooping in to save the day, but looking good while doing it. And no, I don't mean your costumes, Mr. Cramer." Zack hadn't even been annoyed at that; he nearly laughed himself sick, along with the rest of us. Even Ms. Olsen cracked a smile.

"It's not about _looking_ good, it's about looking _good._ As superheroes, we're held to a very high standard in terms of our behavior. While some of our problems are solved rather simply by punching the bad guy in the face," and here she shot Will an amused glance, "we can't just go around doing that whenever we want to. We are given a great deal of latitude in what we're allowed to do to supervillains under the law. However, some things still hold. Like the police, we cannot shoot, or punch, someone just because we _think_ they're up to no good.

"That's a very slippery slope for us, because I know more than one of you has wondered why we could simply go after the members of the academy _right now_. Yes, it is complicated, but yes, we also have a reason. By breaking people out of their cover jobs, we can often cause more problems than we solve. For example, Bruin. You all met him in his cover job, and very appropriately did not confront him as a supervillain. If we were to try to remove him as a park ranger, he undoubtedly would have fought.

"That would have attracted attention from normal citizens. They might begin to wonder how they missed a supervillain under their noses for so long. And then they might begin to wonder if they've missed _heroes_ in hiding as well. A great deal of our own cover relies on people seeing what they expect to see. It's why your parents can get away with relatively flimsy disguises, Mr. Stronghold. If you give people a _reason_ to be suspicious, they will be. But give them none, and they generally won't. That is a large measure of our protection and peace in our secret identities.

"Also, there are other reasons we discourage underhanded tactics of any sort, and enforce our unwritten rules of fair play. We don't ambush, we usually use the front door, more powerful heroes don't use weapons, we issue challenges, we fight relatively clear and direct battles… Much of it is, no, it's not stupid," she added suddenly, suddenly getting some psychic skepticism from both Magenta and I, judging from the looks she gave us, "It's mean to reinforce the fact that you're _heroes_.

"There is an old quote I have heard, and while it was referring to religion, I think it is no less apt for what I am teaching here. 'Assume the attitude of prayer, and in time, the attitude will become the prayer.' Even if you find being good to be hard, _act_ in a good manner, and eventually, it will no longer be an act. This is why you don't tend to find too many 'dark' heroes."

"Is this the whole 'don't look into the abyss' thing?" Zack had asked, and had received a solemn nod from Ms. Olsen. Magenta gave him a kind of "good puppy" look I carefully pretended I never saw.

"It's why being a superhero is hard. You can forget, you might _want_ to forget, to take the high road, becomes sometimes it's so very much easier to take the simple route, rather than the right one. And it's often those heroes with _less_ power than can be more easily tempted to the dark side. Keep in mind Occam's Razor; the simplest solution is often the best. The more you have to justify something, the easier it is to slide into the dark." The most disturbing thing about that whole lecture, _other_ than the fact that I think she was definitely reading our minds before giving it, was that she looked at everyone _but_ Will while she was giving it.

In retrospect, it made too much sense though. Will, and his parents, hardly ever lost. When you hardly ever lose, you don't think about using some underhanded tactics to tip the balance back in your favor. Hell, that was how my own dad had lost it; he hadn't been able to save everyone on his own, and tried to make his own country so he could do it "properly." It had been that though, more than any other, which had made me forcibly reevaluate how I was going to work as a hero.

It was difficult to try to distill a few weeks' worth of lectures into a few sentences, but I boldly struggled to get the gist of it across to Monica. I thought I had succeeded though, because she finally started nodded.

"So _that's_ why you're all 'Halt evildoers!'" she said, looking very thoughtful.

"Act good, be good," I summed up. "I mean, we get a little latitude when we're outnumbered, we're not stupid, but that's basically it."

"Act good, be good," Monica repeated. "I think I get it. It just… It scares me." I must have looked really confused, because she hasted to explain.

"I guess I see now why you go charging in to things. But you're tough, you're used to people coming after you. I-," she paused, and took a deep breath. "Thinking about walking into a straight-up fight with someone scares me to death."

"It helps if you have a reason," I said. "When you know what you have to do, it's not so hard."

"Is that another fortune cookie?" she asked suspiciously. I smiled.

"No, that's just me."


	35. Necessary Good

_One year after graduation_

"Phoenix, we have an alarm at the Maxville First National Bank! The surveillance cameras show one of the robbers punched through the vault door. We've already called off the security personnel, but we need your help! There are at least four of them, including the door-buster," the tinny voice said at the other end. At this time of night, it wasn't the mayor, but usually some other city official that coordinated with the Bureau to handle super-problems. And he sounded seriously frightened.

"I'm on it," I told him confidently, and hung up. I wasn't quite as confident as I sounded, but one of the first things they taught us was that a show of invincibility can be as useful as actual invincibility. At least it tended to make citizens feel more comforted.

One guy with super strength, and three other crooks were not exactly my idea of an easy day. I was reminded of my uncle Anthony's words, that the Bureau would only try me past my strength once, because I'd be dead if they were wrong.

 _Don't get paranoid. They obviously think you can handle this, or they wouldn't have called you. Remember, you can always call for back up if you have to._ Most superheroes didn't unless it was a matter of saving the world or something, as it was a matter of pride to be able to do what you were called for. _And besides, Maxville First National has an attempted robbery at least twice a year. They were due for one. Relax Phoenix._

"So where to?" Monica asked, turning the ignition key.

"Maxville First National Bank," I said, slipping into the back to finish costuming up as she got us there in record time.

"Be careful," she said as I rolled out the back. The ambulance went around the block, and I ducked out the door and down the alley behind the bank, ready for action. The front door was too obvious, and thumps and crashes from the back door let me know I wouldn't even have to go in. They would be out soon.

 _Think, they're coming out the back, where are they going? They must have a getaway car…_ I looked down the alley and finally spotted a van idling at the opposite end. _Right… I don't need to go in the bank, they'll come out the back, and I can stop them here and keep the fight around dumpsters and brick walls._ Better that then the alternative. If I had to start throwing fire, better it be around metal and stone than plaster and wood.

Taking advantage of the cover, I slipped from shadow to another, going past the bank, until I was between two dumpsters, halfway between the bank door and the idling van. It smelled, but I was hidden. Considering there were four of them, five including the driver, I needed the element of surprise. The crooks would have to go past me to get to the van, and the alley wasn't all that wide. With the rather spectacular exit they were going to make, they would have to be running to get to the van. And then I could give them a little surprise. No time to take out the driver now; it would just give the crooks too much of a warning that someone was after them.

More crashes, louder now, and a sudden boom as the back wall of the bank collapsed. I dared a look as they ran out. Three normal-looking guys wearing ski masks and toting duffle bags, and one hulking brute with huge, metallic fists that gleamed in the faint light from the street. As he stepped out of the dust, I could see he had his hair cut into a flattop and was wearing a truly hideous costume including purple metallic parachute pants. I wracked my brain for a second before his name came to me. _Hammerfist, supervillain muscle-for-hire._ He was small-time, at least compared to people like Royal Pain, but he was a very heavy hitter.

 _If I can handle getting hit by Will Stronghold, this guy should be a piece of cake._ _Relatively speaking,_ I added quickly before my brain could take me down a notch.

I waited, knowing I was only going to get one shot to take any of them out without them fighting back, and listened carefully as they ran closer and closer. _Wait for it, wait for it… Now!_ At the last second, I threw out my arm and clotheslined the closest thug. His legs shot out from under him and he hit his head on the pavement on the way down, blacking out. _One down, three more to go,_ I thought as I stepped out over him, flinging my arms to the sides and igniting them, illuminating my costume clearly in the dim alley.

The others skidded to a halt barely ten feet from me, staring in astonishment.

"Stop right there!" I called, raising my arms. I was uncomfortably aware that the driver might be getting ready to jump me from behind, but he was at the far end of the alley. Besides, I figured Hammerfist wasn't just along for the ride. The other two ski-masked crooks looked at each other, and then Hammerfist stepped forward.

"Step back, this is what you're paying me for," he whispered to them.

I'm sure he didn't mean for me to overhear, but he had about the same concept of whispering that Coach Boomer did.

"It's hammer time!" he crowed, clenching his fists.

 _He did_ not _just say that_ , I thought faintly with distaste. I braced myself, because a second later Hammerfist rushed me, hurling himself down the alley with the inevitability of a tank. If I took him straight on, I would get maybe one good lick before he punched me through a few buildings. Nothing I couldn't handle, but he'd get away before I could get back to him. _The easiest way to keep from being hit… is to not be there!_ I slid to the side at the last second, like a matador taunting a bull, flinging two fireballs that caught him in the side.

He grunted in pain as the other two crooks, taking advantage of Hammerfist's distraction, ran by in his wake. They wanted no truck with a superbattle, but they weren't going to get that luxury. They forfeited that right when they hired a supervillain, and I wasn't going to let them get away with all the money while Hammerfist and I slugged it out. I spun and got off two more shots, going low, and hit one in the legs. It was a safe hit; non-fatal, but he sure wasn't going anywhere fast with that injury. The guy went down, yelling and rolling to extinguish the flames, and I jumped aside from Hammerfist's return hit. Brick pulverized on the wall behind me, and I ducked and rolled to his other side.

The last standing crook took one look at his fallen partner-in-crime and grabbed something from his waistband.

"No!" he screamed. I had enough time to recognize "gun" before he started firing. Time seemed to slow down as my adrenaline surged, and I could almost see the bullets coming towards me in slow motion. I threw myself backwards desperately, the bullets missing me by inches, but also putting me right in the path of Hammerfist's right hook.

My face exploded in pain as I sailed the length of the alley, across the street, and into a building on the other side. Stone cracked under my body, and then I fell to the sidewalk, shoving myself up weakly. Will had hit me harder during Gauntlet runs, but it still took me a second to pull myself together. By that time, I saw Hammerfist, with the guy I had clotheslined over his shoulder, getting into the van. The other two were apparently already in, as the driver floored it and began to tear away from the scene.

_I don't think so!_

The pain from my head was almost gone, and I powered up again (I couldn't even remember powering down) and flung more fireballs. Remembering my lesson from Torque: bad guys couldn't get away if their transport was fried, so this time I aimed not not at any of the crooks, but at the van. Two melted tires brought the van to a screeching halt, and meant this gang of thugs was going nowhere. They began to pile out, the driver, the other two conscious guys, and Hammerfist, all of them looking mad as hell.

"You can't get away! Surrender!" I thundered. Their van was useless; I had taken a hit from their biggest bruiser and walked away, I had dodged bullets, and I was apparently ready to take them all on. Intimidation was a big factor in any clever hero's repertoire of tricks, because I wasn't very sanguine about my ability to fight four people at once, even if only one was a supervillain. They didn't have to know that though.

They all looked at each other with varying expressions of panic as I let my fire flare and pulse along my arms. Hammerfist growled and stepped forward, but the guy who had shot at me put up a hand to stop him.

"You aren't stopping us this easy," he snapped. And almost as one, all three of the crooks drew their guns.

 _Shit!_ There was no real cover out here, not unless I ducked down another alley, and I wasn't about to inadvertently lead these guys to someone they could use as a hostage. I could have dodged or run, but that would mean letting them shoot all over the place, letting bullets ricochet, and I didn't dare do that either. I was smart enough to realize this required an act of extreme stupidity. So I stood my ground as they opened fire.

I crossed my arms over my chest and went down on one knee. My fire could get hot enough to melt lead, but there was no way I was hot enough to melt them as they hit me. My super-suit was strong enough to stop most of the hits, but at least three got through, striking me in the chest, shoulder, and neck, the pain surging in counterpoint to the breath-stealing force of strikes.

The downside of indestructibility, as opposed to Will's near-invulnerability, was that I actually _took_ the wounds, though they were gone so fast there was no blood and no scar. Bullets wouldn't have even penetrated Will's skin. He would have felt some pain, but I knew it was a lot worse for me. Of course, this was small potatoes next to the thought that a normal citizen would have had to take them if I hadn't been here. _I_ could handle this, they couldn't. That's why I was here.

It was time to show them the _other_ reason I had taken the name Phoenix. I screamed as the bullets hit, letting it be a lot louder than it strictly had to be, and let myself fall to the ground, my flames dying. Not too many people realized I was indestructible, even after a year being active. My fight with the Wolf Pack notwithstanding, I generally tended to fight with my fire at a short distance. I hadn't been shot successfully before tonight, at least not in a way that couldn't be explained away by body armor. People knew I was tough, but most didn't realize I could take a lethal-seeming hit (for a superhero) and walk away.

Which was the reason I was now playing dead. I didn't want them to get into a firefight with me, because I could practically guarantee that some citizen might try to get a closer look at what was going on. And that would lead to a whole big hostage-taking scenario that I really didn't want to deal with. But if they got closer, I get catch all of them at once. They were all going to walk away with burns for this, but then again, they also just tried to kill me.

"Is he dead?" I heard one say.

"Yeah… come on! I know a guy that'll pay good money for that helmet. We'll double our profit from this job, easy," Hammerfist said gleefully, and I could hear his heavy tread coming closer, the lighter footsteps from the three remaining crooks echoing him. _He wants to take my costume to a trophy collector? Tacky_ , I thought flippantly.

"Make it quick, we still got to get a car and get out of here," another snapped. I kept my eyes open, because the lenses of my helmet obscured them from their view, and watched with trepidation as three pairs of combat boots (and one pair of purple Converse sneakers) came into my line of sight. I was only going to get one chance at this, and forcibly kept myself breathing shallow to avoid looking alive. _Knock down the three crooks, flame Hammerfist, flame_ them _…_ I thought, trying to get my battle plan fixed in my head.

"There's no blood, are you sure he's dead?" I heard another say warily.

"His costume's _red_ moron!" the third said with exasperation.

"Make sure," Hammerfist said. I heard a gun being cocked far too close.

 _They're going to shoot me in the head!_ I realized with panic. I had no idea whether or not I could survive that, but definitely didn't want to find out. I had dodged their shots once before, but I sure wasn't fast enough to move out of the way of a point-blank shot while lying down. Even if I powered up and rolled, I wasn't sure if I could avoid the strike. _This is going to hurt…_ Flames flared as I shoved myself backwards, trying to get my feet again, a shot ringing out with shocking loudness. I could feel it actually skimming along the top of my helmet before continuing on its path behind me. _Thank you, thank you, thank you,_ I remembered thinking.

Then the screaming began.

The last time I had heard those kinds of screams, high, loud, of someone in mortal agony, it had been Zack, when Painbreaker had tagged him. The shooter jerked his gun back as Hammerfist, me, and the other two crooks all stared at him. He was screaming, clutching at the back of his neck as if he had just received a mortal wound, and finally collapsed, his scream cut off his shocking suddenness. Behind him stood a figure in black, robed and cowled like Death, a plain black mask covering its entire face, with sharpened silvery fingertip covers the only relief from the somber hue of the costume. And if I hadn't heard the screams, I wouldn't have been able to recognize Monica.

 _No, this isn't Monica. This is Painbreaker_.

A tiny bit of blood stained the tips of the claws on Painbreaker's right hand from the scratches on the driver's neck. Scratches she had pain-enhanced until he had passed out. But the others didn't know that, all they knew was that someone had come up and made him scream like he was dying. They also knew two other things, only supervillains wore black, and obviously she disapproved of their presence here. It was why I had chosen red for my costume despite my own preference for black; only villains ever really wore it. Superbeings flaunted those unwritten fashion rules at their own peril.

Therefore, they either had another problem on their hands… or a potential ally. The remaining crooks had their weapons out, but wavered with their aim, not sure whether to point them at her or me. She was closer, and also apparently a little more scary-looking, so they kept the guns pointed in my general direction. Hammerfist bounced slightly on his toes, ready to take either of us out if he had to. I was only partway up, in an awkward half-crouch, quite close enough to get shot again or even backhanded by Hammerfist if he chose to exert himself. I could probably flame any of the villainous trio that I chose, but the odds were I'd get smacked or shot again for my trouble.

I had no idea why Monica had suddenly overcome her fear to confront armed robbers face-to-face, but if she could just distract them for a few more seconds, get them to drop their weapons, I would have a much better chance of taking these guys down. For that alone, I would have owed her. I was also scared for her; she was practically close enough to touch the crooks, and all it would take was one bullet, and she was done for.

"Who're you?" one gunman asked, wincing as he shifted slightly on his burned legs.

"Get away from him," she growled. She must have been using a vocal distorter, like Royal Pain had, because it sounded nothing like her. _And what the hell is she doing exactly?_

"Ah… you got a beef wit him?" he said a little nervously, the gun starting to tremble a little as his hands shook with anxiety. The guy had a nasal New York accent, and I tensed slightly as the gun moved away from me by a hair. If he moved it just a bit more, I would be able to move before he could shoot. Hammerfist was also paying closer attention to Painbreaker than to me, and if he took his eyes off of my completely, I could use my fire on him and catch him by surprise. _Keep him talking Monica, come on…_

"Get away from him, leave the money, and run away," she commanded, flicking her fingers slightly so the steel fingertip claws glinted cruelly.

"If you want to take care of this guy, we got no problems. But we got the money fair and square," the gunman protested.

Hammerfist shifted a bit backwards, and I realized he was getting ready to run. If Painbreaker had been a real supervillain, getting between her and a superhero that was on her bad side could be fatal to anyone, villain or not, that was caught in the middle. Hammerfist was a mercenary, not a martyr. If he was lucky, he could get away before Painbreaker finished with the two gunmen and me.

"Get away from him, leave the money, and run," she repeated.

Hammerfist chose to pick future employment over having a pissed-off apparent supervillain on his tail, and turned to run. Both gunmen gaped at him in shock, and I moved. Ignoring Hammerfist for the time being, I flung fire at the crooks, catching both low. They yelped and ran and rolled around almost comically to extinguish the flames, and I surged to my feet to run after them.

Painbreaker had other ideas though, and as the two crooks shoved to their feet and tried to run off in the opposite direction, she flung darkness at them, as she had at Zack back nearly two years ago. Both screamed in agony as she enhanced the pains of their burns, their piercing howls going on and on…

"Leave off!" I shouted, trying to catch her eyes between our two masks as I closed the distance between us and put my hand on her arm.

Painbreaker gasped and clenched her fists at the sound of my voice, the darkness fading suddenly. It was hard to tell behind the mask, but her eyes looked almost stricken.

"It's ok, just relax," I told her quietly. With the pain reduced to something normal, the two crooks were about to get up, but when I powered up again at their movements, then both dropped flat meekly.

"I… thought you were… a supervillain," the gunman said weakly as we approached, gasping slightly for breath and wincing at the pain of his burns. I was scowling at him as he stared at Painbreaker, but he really wasn't paying attention to me.

"You were wrong," she said simply, as I took some plastic cuff ties from my belt and bound both men hand and foot. For good measure, I also bound the one Painbreaker had tagged, and the guy I had clotheslined as well. The police would find most of their work done for them by the time they got there.

"Hammerfist, he got away," Painbreaker said as I finished.

"I know," I said with irritation, glaring down the street where he had gone and mentally leveling a few choice Mandarin curses at him. He hadn't gotten any of the bags of money, and now he knew two superheroes had seen his face, he wouldn't stay in town any longer than it would take him to reach the city limits. He was finished for today.

"Painbreaker," I said, putting my hand on her arm to try to restrain her as she started to surge to her feet.

"You can go after him!" she exclaimed. "The police will be here soon, I called them."

"He's got a head start…" I started, and then something Monica had said to me a while back floated to mind. _"Why are you always reactive, fixing someone else's mess? Why not just fix it before it_ becomes _a mess?"_

"The ambulance-," she said, and I got her drift.

"Let's go!" I exclaimed, and we both ran off to get it. No lights or sirens were needed this time, and I was laughing internally at the sight of two superheroes in a mundane ambulance.

_I seriously need a Phoenix-mobile or something…_

It was two o'clock in the morning, and the streets were blessedly empty. Hammerfist was going to find it tough to hide, but I knew he was also fast. He was strong enough and tough enough to run without pause until he found a place he _could_ hide, and then the next time we caught him it would be on his next caper. That was the way I normally would have done it, because I wouldn't have had the time to go chasing after him on my own. But with two of us…

"Where did he go?" I said, rapidly scanning the streets as Painbreaker took a turn fast enough to throw me against the door. I refrained from cursing, saving my energy for the upcoming fight.

"Three blocks ahead," she said confidently. "There's only one person in my range who has burns on his right ride."

My face lit up with an unholy grin as I realized the implications. As long as she knew exactly how someone was hurt, she could track them to the edge of her range. No tedious or frantic searching, practically _knowing_ you were going to get ambushed…

"Don't stop," I told her, unbuckling my seatbelt and rolling down the window.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, trying to keep her eyes both on the road and the distant, and rapidly enlarging, figure of Hammerfist.

"I saw this in a movie once," I said, shifting up to lean out the window, letting flames engulf my arms. Painbreaker looked from me to Hammerfist and back and suddenly let out a really evil laugh.

"Get him," she growled in her distorted voice, gunning the motor and steering so we'd pass right next to Hammerfist. He turned around at the last second, the sound of the engine suddenly filling his ears, his eyes widening at the sight of me riding shotgun, hanging out the widow, hurling fireballs in his direction. One hit high, one hit low, and the third got him straight in the chest.

That's _for the haircut,_ that's _for the costume, and_ that _is for your dumb-ass catchphrase!_ I thought as Painbreaker swung the ambulance around, cutting off Hammerfist's route of escape. I leapt from the window, arms flaring, as Hammerfist picked himself up with a groan. Behind me, I could hear Painbreaker getting out and coming to stand beside me.

"Remember when I told you to surrender? That wasn't a suggestion. Do it now," I said. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Painbreaker raising one hand, the steel finger-knives darkening as she invoked her powers.

"Careful," I whispered to her in a bare breath of sound, and I saw her nod faintly. Hammerfist, defiant to the end and looking seriously pissed despite his scorched skin, just flexed his massive fists.

"You can't touch this!" he said, and leapt for us.

 _Oh, that is_ it! My temper was seriously gone at his cocky attitude even in the light of the fact that we had taken out all of his partners in crime. _And_ he had tried to kill me.

Both of us stuck at once, my massive, two-handed fireball blasting him back several feet, and Painbreaker's following flare of pain-enhancement, this time mercifully short, bringing him to his knees. He was tough enough to come away without major burns, but he hadn't been expecting the extra pain, and it floored him. And this time he seemed to realize how much trouble he was in, and he stayed down.

Painbreaker suddenly looked over her shoulder, listening to the police scanner we had in the ambulance. Someone had noticed our little showdown, and the police were on their way.

"I have to go," she whispered, and was in the ambulance and out of sight in a flash. She couldn't be seen, not here, not in front of the police and accompanying TV cameras, so I kept my eye on Hammerfist as the squad cars (and inevitable TV news van) came down the street barely after Painbreaker had gotten clear.

"Phoenix, rough night?" Officer Parker called out to me, his gun drawn, but pointed down at the much-subdued Hammerfist. Three other cops followed suite, a fourth holding a massive set of shackles designed to hold someone with super-strength. The fourth man was from the Bureau, and the big car he had arrived in was supposed to be tough enough to transport someone of Hammerfist's abilities.

"Did you get the other four behind the bank, Parker?" I asked, keeping my attention on Hammerfist. He might choose to do something stupid, like grab one of the cops for a human shield, and I didn't want to give him the option. Officer Parker was one of the night-shift cops, and after a year on the job, I had a pretty decent working relationship with him and the others on this shift.

"Bagged and tagged. We got the bank under guard, and other than replacing the wall and getting a new vault door, they didn't lose a single dollar," he said with satisfaction. I smiled a little at a good night's work while the Bureau man approached the sitting Hammerfist warily. I flared up just a little in Hammerfist's line of sight, letting him know that any wrong moves were going to get him toasted. He almost meekly let the guy put the shackles on, and walked slowly to the car. However, he wasn't quite done with me yet.

"Who was that other guy?" he demanded as he passed me. I felt a short stab of fear go through me, that Painbreaker had been seen by the crooks, but also realized that none of the cops or reporters had seen her. It was just his word against mine.

"You got hit in the head too many times Hammerfist," I said shortly, and the bewildered supervillain was led away. I took a few deep breaths and walked over to deal with the press. I had gotten better at this, but I guessed I would need to be at the game as long as the Commander before I could handle them without butterflies in my stomach.

I did my usual smile and waving thing, trying to answer the questions quickly without being too obvious about it. I had a lot of questions for Monica, and I really didn't want to do an extended press conference. The plus side about working the night shift was I usually didn't get the _really_ talkative reporters. The gang always told me I looked really confident on the morning news when my clips played, and Monica had jokingly said once that I should go into acting or something. But that was too silly even to contemplate.

I finally begged off the last questions, saying I had to get back to defending the city from evil (always a great exit line), and slipped down an alley before they could formulate more things to ask. I quick changed as I walked, and found the ambulance in short order, practically in sight of the news van.

Monica was inside, already changed out of her costume, her eyes somewhat red, hastily scrubbing away the remains of tears as I got in.

"Hey, are you ok?" I asked in concern. I hadn't thought she'd gotten hurt during that fight, but… Then logic reasserted itself. _If she's ever actually in pain herself, you'll never know it._

"I'm fine," she said softly. I could practically feel something building inside her though, and wasn't surprised when she erupted in the next instant. "I thought they killed you!" she nearly shouted.

"I wanted them to think that. I didn't want to get into a firefight-," I started, but Monica interrupted me.

"I was watching you, I _saw_ when they shot you, I could _feel_ it! Then- you fell, and I _can't tell_ when someone dies, so I thought-," she broke off and took a shuddering breath. "I couldn't let them get away with it."

 _She was willing to go after them because she thought I'd died?_ I realized incredulously. After she had seen me get thrown across a street, and seen three armed thugs pump me full of lead, she had shoved aside her fear and went out toe-to-toe with them. Will would have done the same thing, but Will knew he wouldn't be hurt. Monica was as fragile as any normal person, and it made her actions all the more heroic.

"You did great," I told her sincerely, the magnitude of what she had just done getting through to me.

"I used my powers too long, I know it, on the shooter…" she started. I put my hands on her shoulders to stop her, turning her towards me. I had to make her believe me, that I believed in her.

"You were awesome," I said forcefully. "We were outnumbered, you did right."

"I just- If you died, I never, I'd never have the courage to do this. I was so scared," she whispered.

"I couldn't have done it without you," I told her. "We make a great team. Hammerfist isn't going to be making trouble for anyone for a long time."

Monica looked straight in my eyes, looking a little desperate, searching for truth.

"I was watching you, with the press. They were cheering for you, smiling at you," she said, and looked down, tears falling from her eyes.

 _Oh God,_ I realized. It was her first real venture into full-on heroics, like my first time at the bank in Berlin, and instead of being treated and flattered by the press, instead of hearing the adulation of law enforcement and the people she had saved, she had to go and hide. The academy was far too dangerous for her to show herself in public, especially for something _good_ like this. She would get no fan mail, no news clips, no pictures in the paper. _Nothing of all the good things I'd been showing her about heroics for the past year._

And she _deserved_ that. She was my friend, and she had just put her life on the line for me. She had helped me clarify exactly _why_ I was doing what I was doing, and she understood, even better than the rest of my friends, why I had to do things the hard way. Will, Layla, and the others would almost _expect_ the kind of praise she might never get. I initially hadn't thought I'd get it, and thought I'd be putting myself at risk for no other reward than just knowing I had made a difference. I thought people would have to be scared of me, that I would make them scared, even now, with how I fought. I knew some were, because I had occasionally glimpsed at some of the letters that Mandy threw away. And yet Monica wasn't afraid of what I had to do, any more than I was afraid of her. She _knew_ me, even more than my friends did in some ways.

She was more than a friend even…

"Would anyone ever… do that for me?" she asked, looking back up at me.

 _Tell her, you have to say it…_ There was a feeling in the air, like the wind before a storm, that something huge was about to happen, if I just let it. _She's more than a friend…_

"I would," I said softly, and pulled her close to kiss her, almost surprised at myself. Her tears quickly dried from the heat on my skin, her lips soft on mine, searching, testing, both of us hesitant, uncertain, but neither wanting to stop. I had no idea what this was really, and I had more butterflies in my stomach now than I had talking with the reporters. It felt like I had two or three flocks at war with each other inside me. Still, it was long minutes later before we pulled apart again, locking our gazes, looking for understanding.

My life had taken a not entirely expected turn, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. I was both terrified and elated, and had a sudden extreme feeling of empathy for the rest of my friends with their own relationships. It wasn't logical, the timing couldn't be worse, yet somehow I didn't care. It was _right,_ somehow, in a way that had nothing to do with morals, ethics, or supervillains. I knew it was important, and I really should say something, but… Then Monica leaned in again to brush her lips against mine, and I held her close, just wanting this moment together, with her.

It was enough.


	36. Anticipation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some references to Book of the Dead, another story in this series, in this chapter.
> 
> There's also a humorous one-shot - [Warren versus the fireworks](http://archiveofourown.org/works/532883) that goes along with this chapter.

When we finally broke apart, I was actually smiling a little, and reached out to tuck a wayward lock of hair back behind Monica's ear. I was a little hesitant, but I flatly _refused_ to make this awkward. I thought something good was happening here, and I didn't want to go all romantic-comedy over it.

Monica smiled broadly at the gesture, looking suddenly very pretty. She didn't smile very often, at least not openly like that, and it brought a kind of light to her face, a relaxation.

"So, you'll really be my personal cheerleader?" she asked lightly, though her eyes were still serious.

"Yeah. But I'm not wearing a skirt or waving pom-poms," I warned. Monica laughed at that, and then stopped, thought it over and snickered some more.

"Ok, deal," she said. We finally leaned back to our own seats, a little hesitant, but both a lot happier we had been in a while, even if we didn't know exactly the reason why. It didn't matter though. It really didn't.

* * *

I had been expecting Mom to know what was going on. In most ways, she knew what was going on with me before I did, even if she didn't come right out and say it. She had known _something_ about what I had been doing with Monica even though I had scrupulously kept it a secret from everyone else. And considering my colossal screw-up last August, Mom had kept a somewhat sharper eye on me. After the first time or two, she hadn't been quite so demanding in asking what I had been doing, but I knew she was still very much aware of it.

And I knew she would be very well aware of this. That was borne out when I came upstairs to see Mom standing in the hallway outside of my room, her arms crossed confrontationally, but her face determinedly neutral. _Body language says she wants a fight, but doesn't want to tell me what. And she's blocking me from getting into my room, but didn't wait in there, so she's still respecting my space. She wants this on neutral ground._ It was nearly automatic, reading body language and facial expressions. I remembered how Mom had used times when we were at the park or sometimes at restaurants to point out the various nuances of how people gave away their thoughts by how they acted. Usually trying to read my mom was hard, but today she was giving a fair amount away. That didn't bode well.

"Warren Nathaniel Peace!" she said sharply in greeting. I winced at that. The last time Mom had used my middle name was when I was thirteen and had burned part of the garden in an emotionally melodramatic moment of teenage angst.

"Yes Mom?" I said with infinite politeness and contrition. It would gain me nothing to get defensive myself. And I wasn't feeling in a combative mood at all.

"What exactly were you doing out there tonight?" she demanded.

There was only one way I could possibly answer that question truthfully that wouldn't cause Mom to have a coronary.

"Saving the city from the forces of evil," I said very calmly.

Mom gaped at me in utter astonishment for a second, and then began laughing. I cracked a smile as she finally had to unfold her arms and brace herself against the wall. Eventually she gave up entirely and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

"Oh… oh my. I'm sorry," she finally gasped out, winding down a bit. I lowered myself down to the floor as well, sitting with my back against the wall next to her.

"Sorry for what?" I asked. Trixie poked her head out of my bedroom to see what all the ruckus was about, made an exasperated sniff, and padded over to flop on both of our laps.

"I've been… less than helpful with all of this Warren. And I wish I could have been there for you," she said in a much more serious tone. I looked at her quizzically.

"Mom, you have," I said. "You always have."

"I could have helped with Monica. I didn't have to leave you to do it alone," she said, leaning her head back against the wall. I was getting confused, because she had said virtually the opposite last August. Why was she bringing this up again?

"But you said I _did_ have to do it alone. It was my _responsibility_ to," I pointed out.

"I shouldn't have," Mom said softly. She trailed one hand down Trixie's soft fur, brushing against mine as I tried to do the same. She looked at me sharply for a moment, and I saw a peculiar mixture of pleasure and sadness cross her face.

"And history repeats itself," she said enigmatically, and rubbed her left hand. Though Mom had never worn her wedding ring in my presence, she still sometimes made a worrying gesture like she was twisting it around her ring finger. I wasn't even sure if she knew she was doing it, but she only tended to do it when she was talking, or thinking, about my dad. I caught her drift almost immediately, and wasn't sure whether to laugh or… I didn't even know what else.

 _Superhero/supervillain relationship? Star-crossed lovers? Dude, what_ doesn't _sound like what happened with your own parents?_

_Because I'm doing it backwards? Mom was married to a superhero that went supervillain. Monica was a supervillain who's becoming a hero-._

_And you're in looooove!_

_I. Am. Not!_

_Uh-huh, just keep telling yourself that, lover-boy._

"Mom, that's not exactly true," I tried to backpedal slightly from Mom's too-accurate reading.

She only raised an eyebrow in a way that made me feel like her and the snarky part of my brain were in cahoots.

"So, you're saying that with what both of you have been through, talked about, that there is absolutely nothing between the two of you?" she asked.

"We're friends-," I started, and then hesitated. I had even been thinking tonight that we were more than friends. My friends had practically held me down and forced me to open up during that trip to Yellowstone, but I had done so voluntarily for Monica. Not for the same kind of stuff, to be sure, but still. My friends had made me realize that opening up wasn't the end of the world, and in an odd way, it had been them that had let me realize this-.

_In depth, sappy, loving relationship in which you will get married and have six kids and you will all defend the world from evil-._

_Look, we're not sappy!_

_And what about the rest of it?_

I ground mental teeth at my brain.

_You said "we." You're thinking about you and her as "we." I think we're a little beyond the "it's not love!" protestation stage. Good God, if this were a romantic comedy, you would have already had sex a few times, had some ridiculous misunderstanding, broken up, and then gotten back together through some stupid stunt that would have required months to plan and execute. Instead you're barely at the "first kiss," stage when you've both already risked death or injury for each other!_

_I'm_ not _ready for-._

_Love? You can say it you know._

_I'm not ready for it._

_Ooo, Warren's afraid of commitment!_

_I am not!_

_You're in love! Warren and Monica, sittin' in a tree-_

I banged my head against the wall.

"Maybe more than friends," I admitted finally out loud. I was quiet for another second, and then asked plaintively, "Do you ever get into arguments with your own brain?"

Mom gave a light, carefree laugh.

"All the time darling. And if you're doing _that_ , then I think you don't need any more backtalk from me." Mom got off the floor (much to Trixie's protests) and brushed off her clothes, holding out a hand to me. I hauled myself up too, holding Trixie to avoid further feline wrath.

"Invite her over sometime if you like," Mom added breezily, before heading back down the hallway, leaving me blinking in confusion after her.

* * *

_The next night_

"Man," Coop greeted me with a wide grin as I walked into the Medic-Co office the next night. I was a few minutes early and sat down in a chair on the other side of Coop's desk to kill some time until Monica got there.

"What're you smiling about?" I asked. Coop waved a handful of five-dollar bills with an air of a man who had just won the lottery.

"Check this out man, sixty-five dollars!" he said gleefully, eyebrows raised, obviously expecting me to ask how he got it.

"What did you do, raid the pop machine?" Coop snorted.

"Nope, won it," he said, still with a broad smile.

"Scratch-off ticket?" I asked idly, knowing Coop would get around to telling me only when he was damn good and ready.

"Office pool," he said, still smiling.

"Your team win?" We had several office pools going at any one time, which sports team would win, when Josh would master his latest video game, when Craig would finally make it to work on time, that kind of thing.

"Not my team, this was one of the personal ones," he said, his grin getting even wider.

"What, Josh finally bought a new game?" I asked.

"Nope, lost that one. We didn't tell you about _this_ pool," he responded, and I started to get a little suspicious.

"Coop, dude, just tell me," I said, letting a little irritation show.

"When you would finally get a girlfriend," he said, casually flipping through his hard-earned money and clearly enjoying my horror-stricken expression.

"How did you-?" I started, and then stopped, grinding my teeth, when Coop pushed a few buttons on his camera phone and turned it around to shot me a shot of Monica and I kissing in the front of the ambulance in the parking lot. I somehow _knew_ it was probably a bad idea to have given her that good-night kiss last night but…

"She was the only girl who _didn't_ have her sights set on you, like you said, and you've been a hell of a lot nicer to her than anyone else here. I figured it was inevitable, and I," he said, waving his wad of cash again, "cleaned up because I'm a friggin' genius!"

"You show that to anyone else and I'll put your phone in the microwave," I threatened. Amazing, I was worried about being caught by my friends, the Bureau, my former teachers, the media, or my friends' parents, but I hadn't even considered my co-workers!

"Hey, if it's _that_ embarrassing, maybe I should tell Keller too-," he started, and cut off when I scowled at him full bore. "Ok, ok." He raised his palms in appeasement. "I'll delete it. I just had to have proof to win the cash."

"You got it, you're rich, now get rid of it," I snarled. Coop shrugged and punched a few more buttons. I hoped that would keep my secret actually a secret! Coop wasn't the type who would have, say, e-mailed it to himself for blackmail purposes, thankfully.

"Done and done. So… what's she like?" he asked casually. I continued to glare, and Coop just let out a huge belly laugh. Monica walked in just at that moment, took in the situation in at a glance, walked over and kissed me on the top of the head.

"Ready to go to work, honey?" she asked in tones of poisonous sweetness, flashing a vampire smile at Coop that nearly stopped him cold. I caught her drift, stifled my own laughter, and responded in the same vein.

"Sure thing dear," I said, getting up, actually holding Monica's hand, both of us swanning out of the office, leaving Coop weirded out and confused. By the time we got to the garage, we were both chuckling quietly, though we hadn't stopped holding hands. Monica had tried to let go once, slowly, but I found myself reluctant to let go, and she had quickly clasped my hand again.

_Aww, that's soooo adorable!_

I quickly pummeled that part of my brain into submission before it could pick up any momentum. I wasn't in the mood to hear backtalk… from myself.

"Where did that come from?" I asked her as we finally got to work, running down the checks on the ambulance and finally pulling out to drive to our sector.

"What, that thing with Coop? There are a lot of freaks in the academy. Sometimes the only way to deal with them is to play to their expectations and then go past them. Tends to make them back off," she said, and cracked another smile. "The expression on his _face!"_

That set us both off again.

It turned out to be a very good night.

* * *

_Two weeks later, Sky High gym_

"I hate this," Layla said dejectedly, staring out onto the gym floor.

"Stronghold can handle it," I reminded her, putting my arm around her shoulder for a moment. I figured she needed some kind of reassurance, considering what was about to happen.

"I know that, _here_ ," she said, touching her forehead. "But the rest of me isn't so sure."

"I survived this test too. Getting shot isn't so bad. I got shot three times last month," I commented, trying to keep things casual.

" _Warren!"_ Layla exclaimed, horrified. The rest of the gang was looking at me weirdly.

_Smoooooth, Peace. Real smooth._

"Who shot you?" Ethan demanded, looking a little green. Well, he might, considering he had to do this today too.

"Some bank robbers. They're in jail, and I'm fine," I said quickly. Ethan only looked slightly less green at my explanation.

Today was the Bullet Test, held once a year for certain people in the senior class. Anyone who could survive a direct hit had to be shot at; people who were super-strong, indestructible, or who could transform their bodies in other ways. Those who could turn themselves into stone, metal, or other tough substances, or most of those in Amorphous Club, that could make their bodies insubstantial, all had to be tested. Ethan, for example, would have to take the test. Normally they wouldn't have done it with Sidekicks, but with the new program, a lot more people were subject to Boomer's tender mercies.

It wasn't done unless Coach Boomer, Principal Powers, Nurse Spex, and the parents in question had agreed that no harm would be done. No one "failed" the Bullet Test. It was basically why everyone had to get hit with various kinds of rays or other devices before they graduated, just so we'd know what they felt like. Except only some people would be subject to this particular test. Other people had to take it that weren't bulletproof, in a variation called the Bullet Deflection test. I remember Melissa Frost, the cryokinetic, had had to take it, seeing exactly how thick of an ice wall she needed to stop a bullet. Layla would have to do the same thing, seeing how many plants she would need to protect herself or others during a firefight. Magenta and Zack would never have to take either version, so they were only here for moral support.

"Ok, quiet down up there!" Boomer demanded from the floor.

He was carefully going through a safety inspection of the various firearms he would be using on Will. While most people only had to be subjected to one shot, Will, being who he was, had to take a hit from everything his dad could handle, within limits of what Boomer was actually allowed to fire within the school. Layla had every right to be nervous. I knew _I_ couldn't survive some of the artillery Boomer was lining up.

Will stood, fidgeting nervously at the far side of the gym, a blast shield behind him to absorb any misses on Boomer's part. Boomer luckily did _not_ cackle manically while doing this test, which would have been a bit much for most people. Layla got paler and paler as Boomer lifted up the first weapon, a pistol, and took aim at Will. She finally turned and buried her face in my shoulder, too scared to watch at Boomer pounded out a shot. I patted her shoulder a little awkwardly as Will stared in amazement at the flattened bullet that had bounced off his chest.

"He's fine," I told her.

Layla reluctantly cracked an eye and heaved a sigh of relief. Zack was actually smiling at Will's astonished expression. But we all flinched again when Boomer picked up the next gun in line and fired again. Layla squeaked and hid her eyes. I almost did the same. Zack, Ethan, and Magenta were also flinching and looking away, so I didn't feel quite so bad. But each one was a little more difficult as Boomer moved up the lethality scale. When he got to the final one, some kind of grenade, _none_ of us could watch. We just waited for the boom, and then slowly opened our eyes and waited for the smoke to clear.

Will was standing there, completely unharmed, and also completely unclothed. Apparently his workout gear wasn't as bulletproof as he was. Will went scarlet and flew to the locker room so fast he cartoonishly left a small puff of dust behind. I almost expected to hear a "zing" sound effect.

"O…k…" Boomer said slowly, and checked the last thing off on his list. "Howard, get down here."

Ethan was almost entirely green by that point, but swallowed hard and got up anyway. Will was back in regular clothes and in the stands by the time Ethan made it to the gym floor. Layla and him then had the kind of reunion that you have when someone comes back from the dead. Kissing, hugging, whispering tender endearments, the whole nine yards. I moved to the opposite end of the bench in case such sappiness was catching. Magenta and Zack joined me within five seconds.

"Hey Warren, what's with you being all touchy-feely all of a sudden?" Magenta demanded, as Boomer started his checks again. Coach could be something of an ass at times, but he wasn't overly cruel. If he weren't so hard on us, we probably wouldn't have been nearly as well-prepared as we were.

"Putting my arm around Layla for about a few minutes while she was watching her boyfriend get shot doesn't make me 'touchy-feely,'" I defended myself.

"For you it does. I think I remember what happened last time Layla tried to lay a finger on you. You burned her," she pointed out. I rolled my eyes.

"One, that was a long time ago. Two, you don't want me to be?" I asked, sidestepping the question. Ok, maybe I was _slightly_ more inclined to offer, say, a high five, a helping hand, or even the rare, occasionally hug if the situation warranted it more recently, but I didn't think I was being, well, _grabby_. But enough so that Magenta had noticed?

_Aw, it's because of your girlfriend._

_Shut up._

_The Lady of Pain melts the fire-thrower with the heart of stone…_

_Shut-_

_You don't have to keep secrets from her because she_ is _your secret, that's so romantic._

_Sh-_

_She is a really nice person, now that she doesn't have to be evil._

_Yeah…_

_You're in loooove!_

_Fuck off!_

I wrenched my thoughts back to the real world.

"I really don't _mind_ that you're willing to be a shoulder for Layla to hide behind, but it's like someone let out happy skippy Warren and he's here to stay," she said with a smirk. I actually laughed out loud at that.

"What, I'm not allowed to be happy?" I snarked back.

"You're Warren Peace, you're a living icon of gothic brooding angst. It's a little hard to change that whole image now."

"I've been out of school for a year Magenta," I said exasperatedly.

"You know you have _quite_ the devoted branch of your fan club here. Should I tell them you're actually nice and approachable and would be _so_ happy to answer all of their question?" she asked.

"You wanna get flambéed?" I snapped.

"Ah, there's the Warren we all know and love."

"I swear if this is a lead-in to a 'nice abs' remark…"

"Naw, that costume of yours doesn't leave much to the imagination."

"Are you torturing me on purpose?"

"Yes."

"Oh great. With friends like you, who needs enemies?"

"Hey man, she's doing it for a good cause," Zack piped up.

"Torturing Warren for fun and profit?" I asked. Zack snickered.

"No, making sure you're in a bad enough mood so the fan girls that are waiting outside the gym don't think you're up for pictures and autographs."

"…I owe you one. You think Will can just fly me home?" I asked, warily eyeing the door.

"If you can pry him and Layla apart," Zack said, jerking a thumb back at the two. They had gone from the "whispering sweet nothings" stage into the "playing tonsil hockey" stage in the short time we had been talking.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Get a room!" The two broke apart, blushing, and then Boomer hollered at all of us to pay attention.

Ethan was very pale, but had at least stopped shaking. As Boomer picked up his chosen firearm, Ethan melted. We watched with trepidation as the shot rang out, splashing in the center of Ethan's melted body. Boomer strolled over and carefully plucked the bullet out.

"Ok Howard, you pass, power down," he commanded.

Ethan abruptly resolidified, went absolutely green, clapped his hands over his mouth and dashed for the bathroom. Us guys wouldn't have bothered him until he was ready, but Layla and Magenta quickly shamed us in to going and seeing how he was doing. We slowly followed him in, only to pause when we heard Ethan throwing up breakfast, lunch, last night's dinner, a lung, and possibly his toenails to boot. He stumbled out a few minutes later and went for the drinking fountain, slurping down what seemed like a few gallons of water. Then he finally acknowledged us.

"I never want to do that again!" he exclaimed, and abruptly collapsed on a bench. "I can still taste the lead…" He scrubbed his mouth with a hand and finally took a few deep breaths. "Will, I wouldn't take your powers even if someone paid me. How did you stand that?"

Will looked a little sheepish and put his hands in his pockets.

"Actually, it um… kinda tickled," he confessed. Everyone stared at him with various degrees of astonishment.

"Will gets the Freak of the Week award," Zack announced.

"Not _again!_ " Will complained good-naturedly.

Zack had started handing out that award during the summer, when Magenta had complained that his ability to get by on four hours of sleep made him a freak. He had gleefully dubbed himself the Freak of the Week, and then passed on the title to anyone that did something particularly "freakish" that week. Like when Layla had casually grown a lemon tree in front of us because she wanted fresh lemonade, or when Magenta shifted just so Zack could carry her around on her shoulder and she wouldn't have to walk. Will had gotten more awards than the rest of us put together.

"So Freak, will you give me a lift home before my fan club gets here?" I asked with a bit of a smirk.

"They're here?" Will said, looking at Zack and Ethan with annoyance. Then nodded in confirmation, and Will looked seriously peeved. "Come on Warren." Will stalked back out to the gym, and talked to Boomer for a minute, finally getting permission to leave the school grounds. A few minutes later we were flying down from Sky High, Will leapfrogging from cloud to cloud to keep from being seen.

"It's really dumb of them to keep hanging out by the gym every time you're here," Will said finally after a few moment of flying in silence.

"If they're giving you problems Stronghold, I'll deal with them," I offered, though the thought didn't appeal to me at all.

"No, they're at Sky High, it's my problem," Will said assertively. I twisted around a bit so I could look up at him.

"Yeah, but they're my fans, even if they're crazy," I pointed out.

"Well, it's like they think they know you, like they're your friend or something just because some of them used to go to school the same time you did."

"Even though they were all scared of me and wouldn't talk to me," I finished.

"Yeah. They're hypocrites," Will said firmly. "Besides, how am I supposed to protect you guys if I can't even keep a few crazy fans away?"

I noticed Will had gotten a lot more protective, assertive, and a lot more… _adult_ I guess was the word I was looking for. I wasn't sure if it was just because he was now a senior and seventeen years old, or because of everything else he had been through with Royal Pain, the academy, and all the associated preparation to fight them.

"Hey, you're doing fine dude," I told him, and Will smiled a bit.

"Like you said, I have to save the world three times the week after I graduate, right?" he said with a bit of a nervous laugh.

It was terribly unfair; the kind of pressure that Will was under, and I think all of us knew it. He was going to eventually be filling both of his parents' capes, someday, and when he actually stopped to think about it, he damn near had a panic attack. All of us were very thankful that Layla was so grounded (no pun intended), because she really helped him keep things in perspective.

"Stronghold, you always do the right thing. Don't worry about it," I told him, and pointed down to where I could see my house.

"What, and you don't?" Will joked, quickly setting me down under the cover of a tree so no one would notice a flying teenager. I couldn't quite answer Will one way or the other, so I just waved him off to get back to school. I couldn't honestly answer him yes, and I wasn't prepared to say no.

* * *

_Bureau office, communications department, one year and four months after graduation, the last week of September._

"You have your first conspiracy theory," Mandy greeted me that day. I raised an eyebrow as she started to hand me my folders, and she elaborated. "'Phoenix's Shadow.' Some of the tabloids seem to think you have some kind of shadowy sidekick. I love these pictures, they're getting shadows of mailboxes and streetlamps and saying they're a person…"

I listened to Mandy with half an ear as I quickly flipped through the articles. Most super-beings had a conspiracy theory or two attached to them; the Commander had some secret talisman that was the source of his power, Jetstream was actually secretly in love with Storm Wind, things like that.

Monica and I had realized, shortly after the fight with Hammerfist, that if she kept showing up, eventually people would start to notice constant reports of some figure in black that kept helping me. She had since kept to the sidelines, striking only from cover, using her costume only to help keep herself hidden. These kinds of attacks were a hallmark of academy training, but since she only could use them in conjunction with my powers, people simply though it was just their original scorchings that were so painful.

However, it certainly gave me a much better chance of stopping a crook in their tracks, and I truly appreciated the fact that she was out there watching my back. She had kept me from getting ambushed any number of times, and I wasn't taking as many hits as I used to.

It was with a sigh of relief I saw the articles were just about as crackpot as Mandy had named them. Even if people _were_ snapping their own amateur pictures of my super-battles, none of the ones here could have been used to conclusively prove a thing. I breathed a mental sigh of relief.

"Yeah, frickin' hilarious," I deadpanned.

"Heads up," Mandy murmured quietly, flicking her eyes behind me, and suddenly turned to keep her head down, her posture deferential. I had only dropped by to pick up my fan mail, and hadn't been expecting meet anyone. I mentally braced myself, because there were several people in the Bureau that would cause the normally outgoing Mandy to act like this, and none of them were people I really cared to meet, not with the secrets I had. Perhaps it had been a mistake to distance myself from the Bureau, but I certainly wasn't the only superhero that held myself somewhat aloof from Bureau politics.

"Phoenix, would you please join me in my office?" a voice rumbled behind me. I stopped myself from jumping and slowly turned around, having been warned by Mandy's comment. Director Adams stood right behind me, looking like a granite wall in his gray suit. This probably wasn't good…

"Sure," I said more calmly than I felt, accepting the rest of my folders from Mandy, shoving them in my bag before I could accidentally leave scorch marks. I was still keeping my mental walls up while I was in the Bureau, for obvious reasons, and the stress sometimes wore at my control.

The director waved me into his office, handing me a cup of coffee, before sinking down in his chair with a faint groan, pulling a mug of something close and taking a drink.

"Would you mind powering up?" he asked. A weird request, but I shrugged and let one hand flare with fire. The director stretched out one hand a little and the fire streamed from my hand to his, floating an inch above it in a small ball. I dropped my own hand in confusion, wrapping it around my own mug instead. I knew he was a fire-controller, but I wasn't quite sure what this little display was for.

The fireball began to spin, and slowly a small, serpent-like creature spun free from it, blinking fiery little eyes at me and then yawning, showing sharp little fire-fangs. I looked at it curiously, and then glanced back up at Crimson Tempus. Even out of his costume, I couldn't really think of the director by anything other than his superhero name when he was using his powers. Which was probably what he wanted, for some odd reason.

"You've been doing very well for yourself Phoenix," he said with a smile. "Maxville's streets haven't been safer in years. I know many people would and have been somewhat… annoyed at going after thieves and arsonists when there are more dramatic and larger threats out there. We've had people request transfers before because they weren't comfortable playing second banana to the Commander and Jetstream. But there've been no complaints from you, nothing but extremely dedicated heroics."

I wasn't quite sure what to say, and I thought shrugging it off wouldn't be appropriate. While the guys I had been battling in Maxville hadn't made for the splashier headlines I had had during that week in Europe after graduation, I had pretty much come to terms with the fact that it didn't matter. Yes, some of the fame was nice; I wasn't going to say it wasn't. I liked the fan letters (even the crazy fangirl ones); I liked knowing I had made some kind of difference. I even liked the fighting, as much as I let myself. The point was I didn't need the elaborate press conferences or to be fighting city-destroying villains on a daily basis to be happy with what I was doing.

"I like being a hero," I said simply. It sounded fairly lame even to me, and I refrained from rolling my eyes at my own statement. Sometimes I thought I had picked up too much of Will's idealism. Crimson Tempus only smiled again, nodding politely at my more-or-less ridiculous answer.

"So, your friends will be graduating in a few months," he said casually, as the little fire snake began to weave through the fingers of his right hand.

"Yeah," I shrugged. I wasn't quite sure where this whole conversation was going, but I was starting to get worried. Why call me in here for a pat on the head?

"Will Stronghold has been designated the group leader, I understand, with you as the second-in-command?" he asked.

"Yeah, that's the plan."

"And you would have no problems with taking orders from someone with less experience than you?" he pressed.

"We've worked out a lot of stuff in the Gauntlet. If it comes to anything having to do with flying, I don't tell Stronghold anything. If it's something on the ground, we've worked out tactics. He respects what I've learned," I said a little tightly. _What, did he think I'd be that petty? Or that Will would be?_

"And you still intend to join their group?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. I raised one right back at him.

"Yes, of course," I said with surprise.

"You've been doing extremely well solo. No one would blame you if you decided you preferred working alone," he said, the fire snake popping its head up to look at me, as if it were Trixie eyeing a treat.

"It's hard working alone. They're my friends, we've been training for this for three years," I said pointedly.

"You do realize Will Stronghold is the single most physically powerful hero we've seen in fifty years? I know he wasn't necessarily interested in working with his parents, at least not on a permanent basis. However, considering his abilities, the Stronghold family might be the only ones capable of handling certain situations. It is possible, actually very likely, that Will Stronghold will not be around to lead your group all the time.

"As you are designated the second-in-command, _you_ are going to be leading your group whenever he's away. You said you're willing to take orders. But are you willing to give them as well?"

"Yeah. I mean, we figured that would happen sometimes," I said. "We planned for it." _This is getting a little Dick-and-Jane, director, get to the point._

"Well, you're very well prepared then. You've also shown some great maturity in the field, and made some fairly solid decisions and tactics," he said, nodding.

"Thanks," I said a little warily. I was hearing a "but" attached to his statement.

"And I've been rather pleased to see you haven't made any more mortal enemies," he continued.

"I've annoyed a lot of supervillains," I corrected.

"But none to the point of swearing bloody revenge. Other than Cutter's Crew, you don't have anyone out there that wants to skin you alive. Angry with you, yes, wouldn't shed a tear if you shuffled off the mortal coil, certainly, but no one ready to give up everything to kill you. Trust me, I prefer that to superheroes that collect rivals like baseball cards. Rivals tend to throw everything into chaos. If I may use Royal Pain as my example number one, you'll see what I mean."

The Bureau wasn't exactly a true bureaucracy, nor was it exactly like the military. Trying to closely regulate people that could destroy large parts of cities was nearly impossible. Superheroes had a great deal of autonomy to do what they saw fit, though the Bureau tried to form a framework of where the heroes might be, and match them to the more appropriate villains when they could. Superheroes could even put in requests to fight certain villains, if they really had a score to settle. Since I hadn't, even though I had the chance to, I suppose the director thought that counted for something.

But I could easily see what he was talking about. Royal Pain's rivalry with the Commander had ignored all the unwritten rules of engagement and nearly precipitated a disaster. It wasn't like the Commander purposefully taunted supervillains, but given that the two were polar opposites in terms of their powers, he often seriously angered the more intellectual villains.

"Yeah, I do."

"That was the other reason I wanted to talk to you actually; Cutter's Crew, and the academy in general. There've been some developments in regards to the academy," he said, tapping his fingers together, letting the fire snake cavort around them.

"Pri- er, Comet Girl has been keeping us updated on them," I said, correcting her name at the last minute.

"Comet actually, she dropped the 'Girl' part a while ago. And yes, I know she has, and she's been doing a fine job. However, you deserve to hear some of this information directly from me. We've had some information gathered, some from our insiders, some from anonymous tips, and some from our in-house think tanks. And the overall picture that's been painted is not good.

"The reason I mentioned rivals is because we've seen some activity from the Crew, and we believe we've managed to decipher some of the intentions of the academy…"

It was really strange to hear some of mine, or rather, Monica's words out of the director's mouth. I wasn't sure how much was directly from what I had given to the Bureau, in my roundabout fashion, and how much was from our spies, but I was relieved that they were at least taking it seriously. How some of the students were recruited rather deceptively or forcefully, the sheer brutality of the academy teachings, the fact that the students were being mentally manipulated to make them easier to control, amongst other things.

I tried to keep myself back in the emotional state I had when Monica had first told me about the academy, the kind of incredulous outrage that I knew the director would be expecting. It _still_ outraged me when I thought about it, but I didn't dare seem as if I had already known this information. But I didn't have to feign what he told me next.

"What truly worries me about the academy is its purpose. Royal Pain wanted revenge on Sky High, and this is her way of getting it, now that she's in prison. Those who are in charge now are putting their own spin on things, but its fundamental principles haven't changed. Brains and cunning are emphasized over brawn and sheer power, and a clever plan, no matter how insanely conceived, is given more precedent than any straightforward tactics," he was saying. "Tell me, if the Crew had been a typical _superhero_ team, who would you have pegged as the leader?"

I thought about it for just a second, and sighed, conceding defeat.

"Bruin or Skybolt," I answered, seeing what he was getting at. If there had been any real justice in the world, Ethan would be leading our team. We all turned to him to help us prepare for any challenge, but it was just the fact that the leader had to take the brunt of any attack that had put Will and I in charge instead. That and I think Ethan would have been extremely nervous with that burden on his shoulders. More so that us even!

"Exactly, but instead a person with perhaps less power but more brains was put in charge. _That_ is what is worrying me about this current attacks by the academy's students. They're violent, vicious, even tenacious, but not overly clever. The attacks on your classmates Swift, Stretch, and Legioness two years ago were much more clever and nearly successful. I can see no reason why they would have backslid."

It took me a second to recognize Speed, Lash, and Penny's superhero names, but then everything snapped into place. Why _would_ they get dumber and more direct? He was obviously waiting for me to ask the obvious question, so I obliged. I had been learned something of patience after hanging around Monica for over a year.

"So why are they running around the world doing random mayhem?"

"The academy's purpose is revenge. It's not so much an educational institution as a tool, like a supervillain doomsday device. And these little attacks? It says to us that it's ticking."

"So pairing the students up with the older supervillains, it's like what, post-graduate work? Combat practice?" I asked.

"Exactly. I expect that sometime soon, perhaps within the six months to a year, that they will begin to join up together again. Then things get worse. These attacks, they're goads. I expect that fully-trained academy teams will begin to perform atrocities that will _force_ a reaction. And I expect they'll go after your team, for just that reason. The Crew not only has a rivalry with you all, but if any of _you_ get hurt -."

"Parental superhero smackdown," I finished. I remembered my mom saying to me that the rest of my friends' parents wanted first crack at the Crew if they showed up again. "They actually _want_ that, don't they?"

"I believe they might even know we know where the academy is located. They might be counting on it. It would bring many of Royal Pain's enemies, including the Commander, to attempt a full-frontal assault on the academy. It's her bailiwick, her iron fortress. It's shielded hard, it has many weapons built into it, and has now a full compliment of supervillains to protect it."

There was a reason why it was considered a bad idea to go after an evil genius inside their own fortress. "Never attack a fortified position," was one of the top ten rules of engagement in Heroic Tactics. Though that was also followed by the caveat, "Unless you have to in order to save the world." There was a reason the Gauntlet had been originally set up like it had. However, I took the director's scenario one step further.

"And if our parents get hurt, then _we'd_ probably go charging in there like a bunch of morons. Wash, rinse, repeat with other teams," I finished flatly.

"Exactly. It's an initial cycle of blatant violence that eventually closes the jaw of a trap. The placement of the academy makes it an extremely tough nut to crack," he said.

"Doesn't this seem kind of… unnecessarily complicated?" I asked. Crimson Tempus gave a kind of humorless laugh.

"Supervillain doomsday devices are like Rube Goldberg machines. If it was straightforward, I'd expect some other trap I just couldn't see," he pointed out.

"Ok, fine. But this whole thing… What about the insiders? Can't they disable some of the academy defenses?" I asked, trying to figure out what exactly the hell _I,_ and the rest of my friends, was supposed to do about all this.

"They're trying, but they have to be very cautious. There are still several experienced technopaths at the academy that are continually updating and improving the defenses. Our insiders were chosen for inconspicuousness and ability to observe, not necessarily sabotaging skill."

"What about… You said you had anonymous tips right?" I asked, trying very hard to make it look like I had just thought of this.

"Yes, several actually."

"What if some of these are from people inside the academy? You said some of them had been forcibly recruited. Maybe they're trying to help," I proposed. I hated raising the idea in his mind, but if Monica had managed to get out, maybe others had too.

"If they are, I wish they would just come forward. Some of the information has been very useful, but we need more, and more specific things," he groused. The little fire snake had been apparently listening intently to the whole conversation, echoing the director's moods, and now it coiled around one finger, bobbing its head curiously at me.

"Considering what they did to Speed, Lash, and Penny, maybe they're scared," I pointed out.

"You're probably right. I suppose we should just be grateful we've gotten that much. Actually, I didn't call you in here to talk about weakening the academy directly. That's a job for other people. I came here to talk to you about tackling the other end of the problem. Attacking the academy is a trap, but the weakness of a trap is that it's useless unless the prey walks into it. I need you to make sure that never happens," he said. I was taken aback, and I swear the fire snake was snickering at me.

"How?" I demanded.

"If- _When_ the Crew attacks you, I need you to keep your group safe. Not just in the usual way, but as safe as they possibly can, within the limits of keeping them from harming others. Will Stronghold will be a very powerful hero, but he does have a rather simple sense of justice. You, on the other hand, tend to see and think about the consequences a little more." _Which explains why he wanted to talk to me separately. But still…_

"You want me to keep my friends' parents from being blockheads?" I asked incredulously. "Why just not warn them directly?"

"Oh, I have. I also know when it comes to their children, I don't expect parents to act rationally," he said.

"You make it sound like they don't have any self control," I accused. I tried to keep my voice level, but the sting was still there. Will's dad wasn't exactly a genius, but he had to understand how bad this could get. Royal Pain had come up with one device that could hurt him, so why not two? Or three?

"I'm simply saying that when it comes to a parents' love for their children, logic flies out of the window. I believe you've seen that in action more than once," he pointed out. I had to concede defeat on that point. Hadn't Principal Powers ( _Veronica_ , I reminded myself again) hidden us in the woods for a week after fighting Cutter's Crew to avoid having our parents overreact?

"Ok…" I said slowly. "Have you managed to locate all the Crew? If we know what they've been learning from their, umm, mentors, we can fight them more safely." I tried not to wince at how pompous that sounded. _Fighting safely. Oxymoron if I ever heard one._

"Unfortunately, no. Bruin, Viper, Bloodtalon, and Skybolt are all accounted for. Cutter and Painbreaker are still MIA."

"Any ideas, leads?" I asked, trying to stay businesslike. I couldn't afford to not talk about Painbreaker; it would look very suspicious if I omitted her.

"Neither of those two have been seen in the academy since our spies got inside. And no one is talking about them either."

"Could they be laying low, or spying?" I asked tentatively.

"Possibly. It may be that whoever they are paired with as a 'mentor' is simply one of those villains that only surfaces every few years."

"Those guys are always the really bad ones," I pointed out.

"That's what worries me. Each one of the Crew so far is paired with a villain that has similar or complimentary powers. The Caveman has tapped into his primal rage; Bruin has great physical strength. Killraven commands birds; Bloodtalon has rage inducement while in bird form, and can enrage Killraven's flocks. Viper can enhance the virulence of the venom of The Snake Charmer's controlled serpents, and Skybolt's electric powers are perfect for recharging Electric Eel. There are a few I can think of that would work extremely well with Cutter or Painbreaker, and all of them are supervillains I wouldn't care to see even every ten years."

"Like who?"

"The Overload, Galactorus, Son of Silver, Judge Libra, The Iron General, Paragon of Death, and those are just the few off the top of my head," he said flatly.

Those were _extremely_ major players, all of them on the Bureau's Ten Most Wanted list, and ones we had all memorized in class at Sky High. Not all of them were world-destroying types, but every single one of them had several deaths to their name. Monica had said Cutter had been getting worse every year she was at the academy, and I was wondering how bad she could get if she was actually learning from any of those guys. Something else was nagging at me though, that concerned me even more than anything Cutter might be doing.

What was seriously worrying me, on several levels, was that the Bureau hadn't found out about Monica being in Maxville yet. I was relieved that they hadn't, but almost incredulous that they hadn't either. While she hadn't exactly been bruiting her existence about, she hadn't been going to extraordinary lengths to hide it either. Her unmasked face was in the Bureau databanks, so why hadn't someone, somewhere, somehow come up with a match? Willful ignorance? Gross incompetence? Neither boded well, the former for me and the latter for them.

"Not good," I said, and shook my head a little to free it from the bad images.

"Do I have your agreement then?" Crimson Tempus asked.

"Look, no one on my team is going to work any _less_ hard. We'll be ready," I said firmly.

"I have no doubt of your readiness, Phoenix. What I'm asking you is, if necessary, to be _less_ heroic. I'm asking you to take the coward's path if you have to," he said very seriously, leaning forward. The fire snake stared at me with unblinking blue eyes, and curled around the fire globe still spinning, suspended above the director's palm.

"You want me to keep my team safe by running away?" I asked incredulously, just to make sure I had heard him right.

"If necessary," he repeated. "This is why I'm talking to you alone. You have felt the fear of death and defeat-."

"So has everyone else. If you think we didn't all think we were going to die when Royal Pain attacked Sky High-."

"I'm not talking about that specifically. I am talking about your first meeting with Ember-keeper," he said sternly. _Tobias? What the hell-?_

A few things came together quickly. Our first link to the academy had come through supervillains that had managed to hear about my healing fire, supervillains that Tobias Battle had managed to hear about. His first meeting had been to warn me of the danger of villains knowing about my abilities, specifically villains attached to the academy. I had had a few brushes with academy observation, like the spyder that had been found on the Bureau jet that had taken me to Europe, but there had been no specific attack to capture me in all that time. The threat had somewhat faded from my mind.

Even though Monica had told me _she_ had been the one to originally inform the academy of my power, I didn't feel she was a threat to me. Yes, she still had to deliver weekly reports to the academy; she didn't dare do otherwise if she wanted to remain breathing. But the information the academy wanted she could deliver without compromising her original promise to me, or her relatively newfound desire to get out from under them. We actually had a little fun crafting some bits of the reports to include some entirely plausible but ultimately useless information. Still, the director's words made me realize I suddenly had a lot of uncomfortable things I needed to bring up with her.

"You want _me_ to run away," I said, seeing what he was getting at. The director nodded solemnly.

"The academy obviously is not adverse to silencing traitors permanently. However, it has also invested a substantial amount of time, effort, training, and money into each 'loyal student.' The members of the academy have proved to me _amazingly_ good at escaping-."

"They'd have to be. They'd have to escape or die, from everything I've seen," I finished. While I was fairly strong and powerful for a superhero, much more so that Monica in most areas, in a few ways she completely blew me out of the water. She was exceptional at running away, escaping, and hiding.

" _I have to be. We all have to be. Capture is never an option, that's how we were taught,"_ she had told me once when I had wondered how she kept managing to slip out of view of cameras, reporters, and observers in general. She was very good at striking from the shadows and fading back into them, which was probably most of the reason why she hadn't been discovered by either side. The 'conspiracy theory' Mandy had told me about was the only real hint we had had that she might have been seen, but with so little evidence to support it, I hoped she was still safe.

"That seems to be the general consensus. But some of these young supervillains are escaping injured, sometimes severely, which hurts their 'progress.' If they had _you,_ they wouldn't need to wait until they were well to continue their 'work,'" he said.

I didn't protest that I would never help supervillains, that my powers wouldn't work on those that I didn't like, or that they could never force me. Having been on the receiving end of Monica's powers several times, even if it hadn't been at full force, and having seen her use them on several people, made me realize everyone had their breaking point. No doubt the academy had many ways of dealing with reluctant students. Monica had implied as much, had blatantly said so when she told me what she used to do for the academy.

"I understand," I said solemnly.

"I'm glad you do. There would even been some in the superhero community would be… _livid_ at the idea of someone with your powers acting as a normal superhero. They would want you to concentrate on helping injured heroes instead of fighting supervillains. It's the other reason we've kept your power a secret."

The very idea gave me a screaming fit of claustrophobia. I did _not_ want to be tied down and forced to use my ember-fire, either for the side of good or evil. It was hard to do, draining, and I still didn't have very firm control over it. It was one thing to voluntarily use it on the people I transported as an EMT, or on my friends and teammates during battle, but another to be forced by _anyone._

The director was trying to scare me, I knew it, and it was probably for a good cause. But everything about this was making me profoundly uncomfortable. I wanted answers, real ones, and there was only one real way I was going to get them.

"I'll be careful," I said finally, nodding at Crimson Tempus and getting up. He only nodded thoughtfully back, letting the little flame snake weave around his fingers again. I left the office as quickly as I could without making it look like I was running, and set a new record for getting to the elevator. Suddenly the place felt confining, with too many eyes on me, and I really just wanted to get away. And also I needed more answers, more information, and clearly, so did the Bureau. I headed out immediately for the Medic-Co office; knowing Monica should already be there.


	37. Uncovered

"We have problems," I opened, sliding into the passenger side seat of the ambulance that afternoon.

"The academy," Monica stated, raising an eyebrow, and I nodded.

"I was just giving them their weekly report," she said flatly, scowling. She and I might have gotten a little amusement out of working out the information they got, but each report still forcibly reminded her that she wasn't free to do what she wanted.

"Same stuff?" I asked.

"You'd think, considering I've been here nearly two years, they'd want to give me some incentive to keep doing this job. But no, same exact response every time. 'Continue observing, report in a week,'" she muttered. "I know it doesn't really matter, but… it still makes me angry."

"But the academy is so forthright and upstanding. Shouldn't it just be enough to serve?" I said facetiously, drawing a faint laugh out of her.

Monica responded that the academy could do something anatomically impossible for its individual members. I didn't think anyone could actually do that, unless they had Lash's powers, and even then I wouldn't to see the results. I mentally translated the insult into Mandarin to use on the next supervillain that _seriously_ pissed me off. I chuckled a little, shaking my head.

"What about the academy?" she asked once I had gotten myself back under control. I gave her a quick run-down of my talk with the director, and from the expression on her face, she was both not surprised and not happy.

"The Bureau is pretty smart," she said quietly. "Trust me, the academy doesn't tell us too much about their goals for us, but this makes too much sense. My… work area was near one of the generator rooms. I saw some of the things they were installing in there. I don't know if they've been modified, but I know I saw a half-dozen mega-rays, I'm not sure what types, and at least four different other kinds of things. They were in boxes, so I'm not sure what they were…"

I somehow doubted our insiders had managed to get into the generator rooms, but hearing casual talk about it from the people who were programming and upgrading the things must have been enough. _Knowing_ what kind of things might actually be turned against us or our parents didn't make things any easier. In my mind the academy was looming larger and larger, casting a shadow over me, my friends, the Bureau, and my relationship with Monica. Like a glacier, it was starting to affect everything around it, and I knew the consequences would be far-reaching and dramatic.

She told me that she personally hadn't heard anything about the academy wanting to capture me, but because she had been undercover in Maxville since that trip to Yellowstone, she was not particularly up to date on current academy gossip. She wasn't sure exactly whom Cutter was supposed to be partnered with, but agreed with the "short list" the director had given me.

"What about you, were you supposed to be teamed up with anyone before they sent you here?" I asked. Monica looked resigned and heaved a big sigh.

"Yes, I was supposed to be working with Judge Libra," she said, looking down at the floor.

Judge Libra had been some young, rich, influential judge down in Texas some forty-odd years ago. Powerful and politically connected, he had a very strict sense of justice… unless it came to his family or friends, for which he could always find some perfectly legal loophole. He had a very annoying "good ole' boy" mentality. But he had gotten sick, and used his power and money to get into an experimental drug trial he had no business being in. It had cured him, but also given him psychic powers, which drove him off the deep end. He now found those he considered guilty of some crime or another, and used his powers to have a "jury of peers" convict them, and then usually execute them. He was a fairly old man now, but his mental powers hadn't diminished one bit, and he was considered very dangerous.

"Why him? And how did the academy find him? I thought he always went into hiding after a 'trial,'" I asked, weirded out. After our tangles with Psychic Club, I really had zero interest in fighting someone with strong mental powers.

"He was willing to accept me because he worked with my 'grandfather,' the Grim Reaper. Since I was related, that made me an old family friend," she said a bit bitterly. "And I was useful because I could help give 'ample punishment to the guilty before their sentence was carried out.'"

"Damn…"

"But since sanity is in such short supply at the academy, I was more useful as a spy here, than working with the Judge. I don't know how they found him in the first place," she said.

Basically, Monica was a sleeper agent, and she knew it. She wasn't being given any current information from the academy, and was totally on her own. She could be recalled at any time to start up something, but apparently the academy found her more valuable as she was. Unfortunately, the director had more current information than she did.

"There is one thing I _can_ give you though," she had said finally. She took a deep breath. "I can draw you a map, give you a blueprint of whatever I remember. I'm guessing there are places even your insiders aren't able to go, and there are some passive defenses I remember that they probably haven't seen."

I felt a surge of excitement at her words, that I could give some concrete information to help those heroes who were risking their lives inside the academy… Then the feeling faded as fast as it had started when reality set it.

"There's no way in hell I can give it to the Bureau. They'll want to make sure that it's real… And I've already used all the anonymous drops I know," I said, sighing in defeat. Someone would have to confirm the map's authenticity, and since only a member of the academy could have made it, I would end up revealing Monica or me, or both, in trying to get the information in. Everything we had given them before could be confirmed by the insiders. The map couldn't, if the insiders hadn't been able to get into restricted areas, and the Bureau wouldn't use it unless they were sure it was real. It was frustrating as hell.

"I'll draw it anyway," she said softly. "I should have done it before… It'll be useful to someone, even if you have to swear them to silence to use it."

And that was the best we were going to get for now, and we both knew it. Reality really sucked sometimes.

* * *

_The next afternoon, Phoenix's Secret Sanctum_

 

The gang had gathered after school, clearly still flabbergasted by the bomb Veronica Powers had dropped on them yesterday. It was one thing to know some supervillains were out to get you. It was another thing to be told they were not only out to get _you_ , but your parents, your friends, and basically everyone you cared about, all in the most horrific, painful way possible, just because one person had gotten snubbed in high school.

"Dude, so they want us to, like beat our parents to the punch if those whack-jobs show up?" Zack was saying. I shook my head, looking sideways at Will.

"We have to make sure we don't lose," I said, phrasing it a little more lightly than the director had yesterday. Since the gang had been talking about the whole thing non-stop since they arrived, I quickly picked up on the differences between my briefing and theirs. Since the director hadn't gone over _that_ with me, I wasn't sure if the implications were a credit to my intelligence, a deliberate oversight, or something more sinister.

_Your paranoia is showing Warren…_

"I could just imagine what my dad would do if something happened," Will pointed out.

"So we fight smarter, not harder?" Magenta suggested with a bit of a smile, and everyone laughed.

"Sounds like a plan!" Ethan said enthusiastically, and began pulling out books. Information was enough of a distraction to keep Ethan from panicking. Everyone looked at them warily, but surprisingly no one groaned when he started distributing them. Passages were marked for nearly every 'mentor' we knew about, along with all the possible ones the director had named too. Ethan's vision of "working smarter" was to have us all be experts on what the academy kids were being trained to do.

Everything pointed to us _having_ to defeat these guys away from their home ground, and even capturing them if we could. We absolutely could not let them just strike and run back to their base every single time, because that would eventually end up just playing into their hands. I was foreseeing a lot of extended, painful, tedious Gauntlet sessions in our future.

* * *

I was not wrong, when within a week of us nearly memorizing what we could both us and the rest of the senior teams were being set against each other in mock battles, imitating, as best they could, the members and mentors of the academy.

Some were easier than others, relatively speaking, but none of them left us any less than exhausted. The scenario with the Caveman and Bruin, for example, was just and out and out slugfest. While there was no one at Sky High that could turn into a bear, there was a transfer student from Kenya that could turn into a rhinoceros. We figured if we couldn't contain _him_ , then we had no business going after Bruin in the first place. Combining him with one of the super-strong guys from Strength Club to act as the Caveman, we only had to limit their damage. It was our "villains'" job to just cause as much mayhem as possible, because that's what real villains would do; cause so much chaos we would be more concerned with saving citizens than capturing them.

There were a few electrokinetics (or close to it) that stood in for Skybolt and Electric Eel, and while no one could exactly mimic Killraven's bird control powers or Bloodtalon's rage inducement, we could come pretty close with some clever telekinetics and a hawk shapeshifter. No one in the school had anything like Viper's poison powers or Painbreaker's powers, and we didn't have any teleporters like Cutter, but we did the best we could.

Not so strangely, Zack and I were teamed up for these fights, as were Magenta and Ethan. Will was often alone, being the only one that could fly, while Layla's ability to use her power at a distance meant she could stand fairly far back, protected, and still help. Her powers had the longest range of all of ours, and were easily the most versatile. She could use her vines to move us up to places we couldn't reach, or to hold a villain, or to hurt him if necessary. She could shield us or citizens, help us cross broken ground, even use the vines to haul things out of our way or break through walls. Will could do a lot of that too, but we all knew the danger of simply assuming he'd be there.

While Ethan and Magenta's attacks relied on surprise and stealth, Zack and I relied on being as obvious as possible. It was impossible for Zack to hide if he wanted to use his powers, and it was nearly impossible for me to do so. That was the reason that Zack and I had the heaviest armor of anyone in the group; we were honestly expecting to attract the most initial attention and its attendant dangers. But once people were focused on us, it gave everyone else a chance to get the drop on them.

When we did the mock-up battles for the Overlord and Son of Silver, two villains that used guns or whose minions did, we had the best marksmen in the school armed with paintball guns to give us a good simulation. Will would swoop in first, drawing their fire, followed shortly by Zack and I, both powered up, him shooting with his stun ray and me throwing fire left, right, and center. Layla would begin to grow vines across the ground, giving Ethan and Magenta enough cover to sneak up to the shooters. It wasn't a bad bunch of strategy, provided we could keep things moving fast enough.

Will, Zack, and I ended up thoroughly splattered with paint by the end of the day, though Zack had also been ducking and diving enough that he was also bruised and covered in dirt as well. Those self-preservation instincts Boomer had been hammering into him actually worked.

All of this helped keep our minds off of fretting over everything. Even though we were basically mock-fighting for our lives, the Gauntlet sessions gave us something to actually _do._ And at least it gave us all a kind of a taste of how things might work in the real world. Zack and I drew the bad guys' attention, Layla helped get citizens out of the way and gave us cover or distractions, Ethan and Magenta backstabbed the bad guys when they weren't looking-.

"And then Will swoops in and saves the day," Magenta always finished, to Will's everlasting embarrassment.

Funny, but true.

* * *

_Sixth and Main, one year and seven months after graduation, last week of December_

"What is that?" Monica said suddenly, breaking off the conversation we had been having and pointing up. I ducked to look up out the windshield and saw a bright light traveling fast towards us, maybe two stories up and closing fast. It took me a second to recognize it, because I hadn't seen this for over a year, but once I did-.

"Comet!" I exclaimed, and wondered what the hell Veronica Powers was doing out here at this hour of the morning.

"Isn't she retired?" Monica asked, eyes searching for what Comet could be following.

"Kind of-," I started, and then abruptly shut up as gunshots rang out.

Running from around the corner, paralleling Comet's course, came a silver man. His skin was dull silver, from his bald head to his ungloved hands, and he wore a shiny silver trenchcoat and super-suit. Even the guns he had in both hands gleamed silver as he twisted and fired them up at Comet. He should have looked ridiculous, like Zack in his Liberace-coat, but he didn't. He looked incredibly dangerous, and I recognized him immediately from Ethan's relentless drilling of the past few months.

"Son of Silver, Son of Silver, Jesus!" I cried as I dived in the back for the rest of my costume. I had absolutely no business fighting a guy on the Ten Most Wanted list, particularly this one, but I couldn't sit here and do nothing.

Son of Silver had been a normal man until someone, an enemy, a business rival or something, had pushed him into a vat of molten silver. Instead of dying, he had somehow merged with the silver. It gave him a metallic body and molten silver blood, which made him immune to fire and fairly hard to hurt. He wasn't any stronger than a normal guy, but because he was metal, his blows always hit harder. It also made him fairly slow, which was why he usually kept a couple of henchmen around, dressed identically to him, as decoys.

But it wasn't his powers that made him really dangerous, it was his marksmanship. He used silver bullets, lighter than lead but much harder, tending to penetrate even tough armor. With extra powerful powder and some other modifications to the bullets and his guns, he had the equivalent of cop-killer ammunition for superheroes. Ever since he had killed Captain Lightning during a silver heist back when I was in elementary school, Son of Silver had gained a reputation as a supervillain who could kill the unkillable. He had killed three superheroes and six sidekicks in the decade and a half he had been active, and had never been caught once.

So why was he in Maxville? Jetstream was plenty fast enough to catch him, and the Commander was strong enough to resist even his bullets. Coming here was just _asking_ to get caught. Or did he know something we didn't?

Monica suddenly hurled herself in the back, next to me, her face deathly pale and her eyes huge and frightened.

"Cutter's with him," she whispered. The penny dropped. Cutter, like Son of Silver, relied more on her marksmanship and skill with weapons than her powers, even though they were completely respectable. Son of Silver had been on the list as one of Cutter's possible 'mentors' for the academy. And Cutter's mobility would save Son of Silver from capture.

I dared a glance out the windshield, and could finally spot Cutter, dressed in some silver-spangled singlet, standing back-to-back with the now stationary Son of Silver, knives in her hands and a cruel smile on her face. I wondered how the hell she was keeping warm in the freezing temperatures out there. I was _not_ looking forward to fighting in the snow.

Comet was hurtling towards him in a dizzying corkscrew path as the supervillain fired towards her with eerie deliberateness. One shot ended up with Comet taking a suddenly right-angle path and speeding off over the city. Monica gasped simultaneously and I felt a sudden stab of fear.

"She's been hit," she said.

_Damn it! Monica can't go to her as an EMT… but no one's seen her costume other than me. And Cutter can't see her at all, or she's dead._

 

"Take the ambulance, go after Comet in costume. I'm calling for back up, and I'll try to keep these two busy until it gets here," I said, making a decision quickly. "If anyone can capture these two, the Commander and Jetstream can."

Monica swallowed quickly and quickly shrugged on her own costume, pausing just a second before sliding on her mask. This was dangerous, deadly, deadly dangerous to both her and me. The academy might want me alive, but Son of Silver wouldn't hesitate to hurt me, and Cutter had a personal score to settle. She didn't say it, though it had to be on the tip of her tongue, and that helped. If she didn't _say_ out loud how worried she was, then I wouldn't have to carry her fear with mine. Neither of us was particularly sanguine about this going well. Son of Silver wasn't on the Top Ten list for picking daisies.

And if Comet figured out who Monica was, even through the costume, then there was no clear way out for her.

"Just be careful," Monica said finally, giving me a brief, intense kiss before sliding her mask on. I didn't have time to do anything more than squeeze her hand back, a little surprised at how much it warmed me inside, just knowing she cared enough to trust my judgment, and to risk her own freedom rescuing someone who could recognize her.

"You too," I said back, and slid out the back, keeping the ambulance between me and the villains, the snow and ice on the pavement melting around me. Only a few moments had passed since Comet had left the field of battle, and Son of Silver and Cutter were still standing back-to-back, breath steaming, looking for trouble.

"This is Phoenix, calling for back up. Son of Silver and Cutter are in front of the Hallowell Building, and Comet has already been hit," I said as I activated the com in my helmet. I had gotten it put in a few weeks after I had gotten back from Europe, though it would only really get useful after I started working with the rest of my friends.

There were a few seconds of stunned silence on the other end as I imparted my news, then the operator suddenly found her voice.

"Confirmed Phoenix. Back up is on its way. Use extreme caution!" she said sharply. I knew the Bureau didn't want me tangling directly with anyone from the academy, but there was no way I could just sit by and watch them do whatever they wanted. I could not take the coward's path now, no matter the director's wishes, because there was no one else here right now to stop them.

"Right," I said back, and clicked off the com. I took a deep breath, knowing this was going to hurt. The worst thing that could happen here… Scratch that, there were several worst things. They could capture me, which was probably high up there on the "worst" list. They could escape. They could hurt anyone else that happened to wander by so they _could_ escape. They could seriously hurt or kill whoever came by as back up.

_So my job, right now, is containment. I have to keep them from planning anything clever, from escaping, capturing, or random violence._

And the easiest way to do that was to keep their attention focused on me. I certainly had plenty of practice in that. Most of our Gauntlet runs had me and Zack making ourselves the biggest, brightest, most obnoxious targets we could, so that the rest of our team could sneak up on them. The quickest way to do get them fixed on me was to make them mad.

 _Well, Cutter didn't have much of a temper when I first met her, and I somehow doubt it's improved. And if she's Son of Silver's ticket out of here, he won't dare try to run without her. This is_ really _going to hurt._ I seriously wished Will was here, and I knew if I called, he and the rest of the gang would come. But I didn't dare. That was _exactly_ the kind of stunt Crimson Tempus had warned me against. I took a last deep breath and strode into view, fear piercing me, but I shoved it aside as I powered up.

Son of Silver looked at me curiously, and tapped Cutter on the shoulder to alert her to my presence. She turned around, looking thinner and even crueler than the last time we had met. I was squirming a little inside though when I saw she was wearing elaborate silver wraps around her wrists to hide the burn scars I had given her. She scowled when she saw me, and the knives in her hands glinted. I knew she wanted to hurt me, badly, and I took another steadying deep breath before I spoke.

"Cutter, back to lose again?" I called. As I talked, I watched her weave her knives in the air, making flickering gestures with her hands that had a look of familiarity. I wasn't quite sure what she was doing, but I filed the odd behavior away. Her lips thinned in a parody of a smile before she answered my challenge.

"Oh, I just can't get enough of you, hot stuff. I couldn't stay away from this party," she said in reply, still making the odd gestures with her hands. "Where are your playmates? I thought you heroes liked to gang up on us poor little supervillains." Son of Silver seemed to be watching the conversation between Cutter and I with some interest, and was as relaxed and casual as if he were waiting for a bus.

"Where're yours?" I shot back. I was scanning the skies, hoping against hope back up would get here soon.

"Here and there, learning things, getting ready to kill you. Thought I might get an early start," she said, her knives weaving rapidly in the air.

Cutter still liked to talk too much, and I was barely getting warmed up. I was hoping I could keep her exchanging barbed witticisms instead of fire or knives. The academy wanted me alive, so all of her tough talk was bluff, I hoped. I knew she probably wouldn't worry about hurting me, just for kicks, and I hoped she would do the honors herself instead of getting her mentor to do it. I really, really hated getting shot.

Then she made a short nod with her head, pointing her chin at me, and Son of Silver suddenly flung up one gun in my direction. _Oh holy fuck!_

 

I instinctively ducked, but he anticipated me with contemptuous ease, and three loud bangs rang out on the street. Each one drove me a step back, the bullets all going right through the phoenix emblem on my chest, burning like hell. I gasped and coughed, my mouth filled with the taste of iron and silver, and spat to rid myself of the taste. I realized, with growing horror, that there was blood on the pavement. My blood.

Indestructibles don't bleed, our bodies fix themselves too fast, and I literally couldn't remember the last time I had. I would only be bleeding if I had a massive trauma, and the icy fear I had felt the first time I had fought Cutter was suddenly back. Three sharp stings from my back, followed quickly by three loud, metallic _pings_ on the pavement and the sudden absence of the taste of iron from my mouth made me realize my body had just rejected the bullets. I was starting to shake; that was the closest I had come to death since I had first used the ember-fire. A few extra hits in more vital areas and I would be dead before I could pull myself together.

 _Was that to scare me? They have to know the academy wants me alive…_ Well, if they wanted to scare me, they were doing a pretty damn good job!

"Didn't work," I said with a casualness calculated to insult, standing upright again, snow melting off my costume and puffing into steam. Son of Silver actually looked very surprised, his eyes widening and mouth gaping as I got up from his hits. _Fine, how do_ you _like feeling scared for once?_ I snarled mentally through my fear. He obviously wasn't used to people getting up after he had hit them.

"How about I carve you a new one instead, pretty boy?" Cutter said, leaning forward, her hands still flickering. Son of Silver put his hand on her shoulder though, and stopped her before she could teleport forward to carry out her threat. At that moment, a bright light rose up from behind them, and the lenses in my helmet darkened protectively as Comet blazed in from over the skyscraper.

 _Yes!_ I cheered mentally; relieved she hadn't been too badly hurt, or at least Monica might have been able to help patch her back together. I charged Son of Silver when they turned to find the source of the white light, taking advantage of the distraction. I couldn't let him fire at her again, because this time he might not miss. And Comet was _not_ on the academy's protected list.

He didn't even hear me coming until I was practically on top of him, turning at the last second and trying to lunge for me. I didn't bother to try to tackle him; as heavy as he was from all the metal, it would have been like trying to wrestle a lamppost. I took a page from Torque instead, and grabbed his wrist as he turned, using the momentum to throw him off balance and make him measure his own length on the icy pavement.

 _He's going to be pissed when he gets up…_ I thought, surprised I had actually managed to trick him, and ducked back out of the way. I did not want to wrestle him for his guns, not at that close of a range.

I was expecting to feel one of Cutter's knives in me at any second, but instead felt a huge side-swiping blast of cold from behind me. I turned to see Comet climbing into the sky, Cutter on her side on the icy pavement, thickly frosted with ice crystals from Comet's fly-by attack. Comet gained height and spun down, diving for Son of Silver. I threw myself out of the way just as she dive-bombed him, and saw him get covered with frost from her attack. She was up in the sky again in an instant, and both supervillains were stirring slowly, Son of Silver actually seeming to move in slow motion.

 _With his molten silver blood, cold is nearly lethal to him!_ I remembered gleefully from Ethan's lessons, and turned instead to Cutter. Son of Silver was clearly out of my league, because my fire would actually _help_ him at this point, but if Comet could keep him contained, I could try to keep Cutter away from him to keep them from escaping.

I whirled and began throwing fireballs as fast as I could, whipping them in a fan-shaped pattern, keeping them aimed more at Cutter, trying to cut her off from him. She had had the glorious feeling of trying to teleport through fire once before, and I hoped the experience would keep her from trying again, as long as I could keep enough random fireballs going off around her.

"Halt evildoers!" I heard a voice from above me. I turned to see Jetstream suddenly let go of the Commander, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Will's dad thudded down right next to me, and I resisted the urge to hide behind him. I had _seen_ Will take much worse hits than I had just a moment ago without even flinching, and I did _not_ want a repeat performance. Let the Commander take Son of Silver's hits, he was better equipped for it than I was!

Cutter's head snapped up at the Commander's words, and then narrowed her eyes at me in a chillingly evil smile. I belatedly realized I had let my fire up when the Commander and Jetstream had arrived, hoping somehow they would be able to get her.

"Later," she said, and kipped to her feet.

"No!" I cried, as I suddenly saw her flash to Son of Silver's side, and then vanish into thin air. "Damn it!" I snarled, forgetting the Commander was right next to me. We were looking up and down the street, and above us I heard Jetstream call she couldn't see them either.

"What was _that?"_ Jetstream said finally, landing beside us. Comet spun down next to us a moment later, looking none worse for the wear. I couldn't even see any wounds on her at first, until I saw a bloody graze on one leg, staining the pristine white of her costume.

"Very strange. I can't believe Son of Silver would have the guts to attempt anything in Maxville… normally," she said, shaking her head, her expression stern.

"Yeah, but with Cutter with him, he's a lot faster than he should be," I pointed out, still looking around. I was still pretty hyped up from the fight, and if anyone had startled me at that point, I would have damn near exploded with pent-up tension.

"He's still fast enough. I couldn't _believe_ you actually confronted him Phoenix. You should know better," Comet scolded. "You could have been killed!"

"You were hurt, what was I supposed to do?" I asked forcefully. Comet drew herself up short at that. "I didn't even know you covered Maxville anyway."

"I don't, I'm nearly inactive," she said stiffly. "But I have a score to settle with Son of Silver."

The Commander and Jetstream were looking back and forth between us, clearly uncomfortable, before the Commander interrupted.

"But they're gone, and whatever they came here for, they didn't get it," he said in slightly too-hearty tones.

"We need to keep this quiet, Commander, Jetstream. Phoenix, I think this is attack is a little too random. Please, _don't_ tell your friends before we've figured this out," she said, catching each of our eyes from behind her white mask until we agreed. "Get on home everyone, I'll take care of the media."

The Commander and Jetstream gave me a brief smile and a nod before lifting off again, and I quickly got myself changed in an alley and called Monica to pick me up. Surprisingly, she was fairly close, and didn't look nearly as harried as I expected her to.

"What happened back there?" I asked her. The Bureau was nailing a lid on this whole attack, according to what Comet had said, which was perfectly fine with me. I was shaking pretty back with reaction, not from using my power, but from adrenaline and fear. I couldn't have given a coherent description of the fight to the press if my life had depended on it.

"I found her, but she had only gotten winged, just a graze on her leg. I didn't even have to get out of the bus before she powered back up and threw herself back in the fight. By the time I got back to you, it was all over," she said, clearly both frustrated and afraid, but also relieved that she hadn't had to risk her identity.

"Yeah, you saw who showed up though," I pointed out.

"That's what worries me. That was a test. They were testing my information about how fast the Commander and Jetstream respond!" she said in a shuddering tone. I suddenly got it. The information she had been passing to the academy had all kind of been in the abstract, until she had just seen it used in action.

"They sent _Son of Silver_ to _Maxville_ as a _test?"_ I nearly sputtered. What kind of rewards or blackmail were the academy using that they could get an independent supervillain assassin to do something both insanely dangerous and without obvious profit?

"Who else could have gotten them out here? Cutter was with him as insurance against capture," she pointed out. "He's safer with her than with his usual decoys."

"Jesu damn," I said finally, leaning back into my seat and staring at the ceiling.

"I hate this," Monica said softly.

"You're not the only one," I reminded her, reaching out to hold her hand. She squeezed mine hard, and I heard her go through several breathing exercises to get herself calm again.

"We're on to them, they can't keep this up forever," I said. "It'll end, it has to end sometime."

"I'm just afraid of it starting."

* * *

_One week later_

I had finally gotten up the courage to invite Monica over to my house. Well, maybe courage wasn't the right word. We were friends, and it would be nice to hang out somewhere other than the Medic-Co office or our ambulance. I wanted some downtime for the two of us, and my house was a much better place for that than our workplace, assuming I didn't get a call.

Also, Monica had been very tense since the fight with Son of Silver and Cutter, with very good reason, and I wanted to give her a chance to relax before she imploded or something equally messy. She recognized it too, and had accepted my invitation too hang out on our night off with almost unseemly haste.

I hadn't been allowed to talk with my own friends about the fight with Cutter and her mentor, mostly because the Bureau had squashed as much news about it as they could. Publicity of the academy's atrocities would only serve as fuel for their fire, and they definitely didn't want the Crew's rivals to know about any attempts on me. I knew my friends would have totally gone to bat for me, and if I had called, they would have come. Which was exactly why the Bureau didn't want them to know. It burned me up to keep my mouth shut about it, and I was very relieved that I had Monica to talk to. What the Bureau didn't know about, they couldn't forbid.

Embarrassingly though, Monica had to basically sneak in the back door, just in case any of our neighbors were watching. She slipped in like a commando, closing the door silently behind her, before finally turning to say hello. She stopped even before she started though, because Mom was standing in the kitchen doorway behind me, watching us both with amusement.

"Hello Joy," Monica said after a moment, trying to gloss over the awkwardness of being face-to-face with someone who had basically put her mind back together for her. It gave Mom a lot of power over her, though I knew she would never use it, but it was a very hard thing to forget.

Mom stepped forward and put her hands on Monica's shoulders, holding her at arm's length and looking at her frankly. Monica matched her gaze for gaze.

"You're looking much better Monica," Mom said finally, and I knew she didn't just mean that Monica had lost some of the bitterness and tenseness around her eyes that she had carried when they had first met.

"I'm feeling better," Monica said quietly. Mom nodded, and leaned in to whisper something to her. I couldn't hear what she said, but Monica's eyes widened in what looked like shock, and she nodded vigorously.

"You two have fun, I'll be upstairs," Mom said, turning away from her, smiling at me, and then breezing out of the room. _Ooooo… k, that was strange._

"Come on, let's go," I said, turning to head downstairs. I was a little desperate for a fragment of privacy and as much normalcy as we could get.

"Warren, remember Zack's coming over at eight thirty!" Mom called to remind me.

"Right!" I yelled back. Monica looked over at me, concerned. It was only around six thirty or so.

"I've been teaching Zack self-defense. And he has this complete inability to get anywhere on time. I've never seen him show up less than half and hour late to anything, unless he was with Magenta," I explained.

"Ah, I've known a few people like that. Where are we going?" she asked, as she followed me into the basement. It wasn't a finished basement, instead being all concrete floors, clutter, dusty shelves, dank smells, and cobwebs. It certainly wasn't a place you'd like to hang out for any amount of time.

"Secret Sanctum," I said, heading for what looked like an old fuse box in the corner of the room. Monica only raised an eyebrow at that, but looked terribly pleased. It was an act of trust to bring her here, though certainly no less than any other thing she knew about me already. I opened up the fuse box and flipped a concealed switch in the back to open the biometric scanner. Whatever else I could say about Royal Pain, she had built a very well concealed sanctum.

 _"Come on baby, lemme show you my Secret Sanctum." Is_ that _what they're calling it nowadays?_

 

_Shut up. You have a smutty mind._

 

 _Technically it's_ you _that have the smutty mind._

 

I didn't dignify myself with an answer.

Unlike the Stronghold's fireman's poles or the Howard's underwater passage, Mom and I just had a simple concealed staircase leading to our sanctum. Then again, Royal Pain had originally had a lot more technological deterrents down here, ones we definitely didn't need and had had removed.

The sanctum for the Peacemaker and Phoenix was a lot more like an office and workroom rather than the Commander and Jetstream's trophy gallery/gameroom. Mom's half had maps on the walls, pictures of leaders, diplomatic reports, and counters covered with more of the same, mixed in with fan mail, pictures, and thank-you letters. Mom claimed it was organized chaos, and always seemed to be able to put her hands on whatever she was looking for, but I would have burned something out of frustration more than once.

My half was almost pathologically neat by comparison, though I had obviously had far less time to accumulate stuff than Mom had. There were some papers from the Bureau, some newspaper articles, folders of fan mail, and two spare costumes with repair supplies nearby. There were professionals at the Bureau that would take care of major repair to the armor plates (or more extreme cases like what had happened with the Wolf Pack), but I preferred being somewhat self-sufficient when it came to keeping Phoenix looking like a superhero and not a scarecrow.

Monica took a slow circuit around my half of the sanctum, glancing over at the computer, TV, the few books and weights I had neatly arranged on shelves. This place had become more personal to me that even my own bedroom, even though it wasn't particularly impressive. I don't know why, but I wanted Monica's approval for some reason.

_And don't say a word._

 

_I didn't, I didn't even have to._

 

_Good._

 

_You should have a couch down here or something-._

 

_Shut the hell up._

 

"This is nice," she said, turning back to me with a smile. "The academy would tell us stories, horror stories, about heroes keeping trophies or crap like that. But this… this is you."

"Thanks. And it's… actually kind of true about the trophies. I mean, I've seen the Commander's sanctum and that's practically a gallery-."

"You've been in-?" she started, incredulous, and then stopped when I nodded. "I didn't mean like weapons and armor. I mean, actual trophies."

I caught my mouth before it could drop. The more I learned about the academy, the more I wanted to just go find Royal Pain and punch her in the face. It was caveman-like of me, I knew it, but I was still thoroughly convinced a few extra punches in her face would at least make me feel a little better, and probably make Monica feel better too.

"No, nothing like that," I assured her, and nodded my head at a recent addition to the top shelf. Three silver bullets, ones I picked off the pavement after my fight.

"From Son of Silver? I think I remember something we agreed about not being masochists," she accused lightly, crossing her arms.

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," I said without thinking, and then nearly hit myself. Monica had probably used that phrase, or had been forced to use it, when she had been working at the academy. "Sorry," I added quickly. She had looked momentarily stricken, but waved it off, turning to look at one of my spare helmets.

She gave a yelp as Trixie unexpectedly oozed out from underneath, jumping backwards right into me. I steadied her, my arms encircling her, feeling unexpectedly strong right then for no reason I could even name. She looked over at Trixie and gave a bit of an embarrassed laugh, and I let her go quickly, not wanting to overstep any bounds. Or go too far.

_Pluh-leeze! If anything you haven't got far enou-._

 

_Shut it._

"You have a cat," Monica said as Trixie padded to the edge of the table. Smiling, she reached down to let her sniff her fingers.

"Yeah, that's Trixie," I said, eyeing the feline warily. I was wondering if she was planning to bite Monica or something equally rude.

"I would have pegged you for a rottweiler, or German Shepard, or pit bull or something. Instead you have this-." Trixie chose that moment to roll over on her back and put her paws up in a pose of nearly lethal cuteness. "Adorable little kitty cat!" She reached out to ruffle up her fur and scratch her head.

"Yeah. She kind of picked me. I got roped into going into an animal shelter this one time…"

Monica looked up at me with a barely suppressed smile and a raised eyebrow.

"It's a long story."

"Ok, if you say so," she said, and Trixie rolled back up and stretched carefully, showing sharp teeth and claws. She padded over between the two of us on the table and sat down regally, looking back and forth between us.

"Mrow," she announced, taking a long look at Monica, and then, I swear, _nodding_ at me in approval. "Rorw, mrew, mao!"

_See, even your freaking cat-._

 

_For the love of God, shut the fuck up!_

 

My brain went entirely silent.

"Cute cat," Monica said with a smile, and then glanced up at the silver bullets again as Trixie settled down for a serious washing after such strenuous activity. "Warren, how _did_ you keep Son of Silver from shooting you more than that? I've never heard of anyone getting away alive once he had set his sights on them. At least, when he's being serious"

"There was this judo throw I learned from Torque, remember him from last summer? The car guy? I figured Son of Silver couldn't fire if he were face down on the pavement," I said, trying to keep my tone casual.

That fight had been terrifying, and I knew either Son of Silver or Cutter could have killed me several times, if that had been their intention. A headshot would have been enough from Son of Silver, and Cutter just would have had to have teleported me straight up as far as she could see and let me drop. There were limits, even for indestructibility. _Possibly_ I could have survived, but I definitely wouldn't have bet on it.

"Show me," Monica commanded, standing up suddenly. "That probably wouldn't hurt for me to know."

"The throw? Uh, sure," I said with a shrug. We weren't exactly on a date or anything, and it had been my fault bringing up last week's fight. And we _were_ in the sanctum, which was rather conductive to being a hero. I was almost expecting to hear a snarky comment from my brain about being a mood-killer, but it was being thankfully silent.

We wrestled the exercise mats out from the closet so we wouldn't be tumbling on the floor, and I started to show Monica the tug on the wrist, followed with a kind of assisted push that turned a deadly lunge into a nose-first dive on the floor for one's assailant.

"It doesn't _look_ too hard," she commented with a bit of irony, and I gave a self-deprecating smile.

"I worked on this for at least a week before I could even figure out what I was doing. It took me another two before I really got it to the automatic stage," I confessed, and Monica nodded.

"Ok, good to know the learning curve. Let's do this," she said, and reached out for her first attempt. Nearly an hour and forty-five minutes later, she was sweat-soaked and bruised, though she showed not the slightest sign of discomfort. But I knew thunking the ground at some of those angles she had landed was going to leave a mark.

"You're doing fine," I was saying, as Monica lined up for another attempt.

She hadn't made a single complaint at my teaching technique, even though I knew I wasn't precisely the best at this. The best way I knew how to do this was by endless repetition until it clicked. There was probably a better way, but that was the way I knew. Though Monica had powered up at least three times in frustration, it wasn't for more than a split-second, usually when it was seriously time for a break.

"I think I almost got it, I nearly had you tripped there last time," Monica said, shoving her hair out of her face with both hands and putting it back in its tie, her expression determinedly neutral.

"You're not going to hate me for doing this to you, are you?" I asked with a bit of concern. Inviting her over to my house and then basically putting her through the wringer wasn't exactly how I wanted this evening to go. I wasn't precisely sure how I had wanted the evening _to_ go, but this wasn't exactly it.

"No," she said simply. "I _did_ ask for this. And I might be good at running away and hiding, but I can't fight worth a crap. If you can teach your friend to fight, I can at least learn a little something. How much time do we have?"

I checked the clock on the table. Only eight fifteen.

"With Zack, about another forty-five minutes," I said with a smile.

"Ok," she sighed. "A few more passes and I better get going."

She heaved herself up out of her chair and took her stance opposite me. I lunged at her like I had the last dozen times, watching her hands as she tried to grab for my wrist. This time she actually succeeded in getting a hand on me, but with careless precision, her fingers slid into position for the nerve-pinch hold Tobias had used on me. I barely clenched my teeth on a scream as I collapsed in pain.

I was swearing creatively in Mandarin as Monica pulled her hand back quickly, and knelt on the floor next to me. The pain was gone the instant she pulled her hand away, and I took a couple deep breaths to clear my head.

"I'm so sorry, I got frustrated, and I shouldn't have done that. I _know_ what hurts, and I'm sorry," she said quickly, almost babbling, helping me back to my feet. I shook my head slightly, rubbing my wrist with my other hand.

"You didn't know. Hey, you got the throw though," I said with a ghost of a smile, trying to shrug it off. Monica only looked at me very seriously, and gently captured my injured arm. I froze for a second, the mood between us suddenly shifting into something much different.

"Warren, I'm sorry," she said solemnly.

Then she slowly lifted up my arm and softly kissed the inside of my wrist, in a gesture of apology and also showing her fearlessness. I could burn her so easily this way, as easily as she had hurt me, and yet she didn't show any hesitation. It was an extraordinarily intimate touch for me, I felt my pulse quicken and my breath get ragged, my temperature spiking as I struggled for control. It was such a vulnerable moment, fragile, for both of us.

"Monica, you don't know what that's doing to me," I hissed, trying to warn her. I didn't want her to stop, but I took another deep breath and gently pulled her head up before I could burst into flames.

"Yes I do," she responded.

It wasn't like there were swelling violins, time stopping, birds breaking into song or anything like that, but suddenly it was there, strong and bright and blindingly obvious. I reached out with my other hand, clasping her to me, and I felt something break in my chest. She was looking up at me, her dark eyes understanding and wanting, and everything started to fall into place.

 _I love her_ , I thought simply, and realized it wasn't so hard at all to think that. We were kissing suddenly; before I could say anything, heat starting to build hard in my hands. I needed to pull away before I burned her, but the softness, strength, and passion in the kiss were a much more serious distraction. _I need to tell her…_ I thought vaguely.

"Warren, what the _hell_ , man?" I heard someone yell behind me. Monica and I whirled around, still caught up in each other's arms, to see who had found us out, both of our hearts pounding with fear.

Standing in the doorway, his face incredulous and angry, was Zack.


	38. Shindig

We both froze, not sure what we could do or say. _He makes the same New Year's resolution for three years in a row, and he has to pick_ right now _to start being on time?_ I thought incredulously. And pointlessly. It was my own damn fault for leaving the sanctum door open.

"Zack-," I started, and then took a deep breath. "This is Monica Keller, my girlfriend."

Zack gaped at me, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Monica smothering a look of astonishment. We hadn't exactly declared ourselves to be properly dating or anything so far, and it had obviously surprised her that I had taken that step right now. That made two of us.

"Girlfriend?" Zack said, slackly astonished.

"Yes," Monica said quickly, straightening slightly in my grasp.

"When did-? Where-? How-? What-?" he got out.

"I was sent here to spy right after we… fought the first time. Seeing how long heroes took to get to the scenes of crimes, things like that. I was working as an EMT," Monica said softly. "Then last June, I was assigned a new partner," Monica explained. Zack was starting to glow, more obvious in the dimness of the stairwell than it would have been in the main room, but a sure sign he was quite angry enough to have lost control of his powers.

"Why didn't you tell us? Or _somebody?_ " Zack demanded of me. Monica and I looked at each other, trying to figure out the best way, if there was one, of explaining the situation.

"I figured out what she was doing-." Zack's glowing was getting perceptively brighter. "And I thought I could help out by messing it up. I couldn't take her into the Bureau without her fighting and blowing both of our covers."

"And I didn't want to risk fighting him, so I went along with it," Monica added. Zack was looking back and forth between us, not quite ready to believe.

"The Bureau had kinda screwed up with getting spies into the academy, and I thought I could do better on my own," I added. Monica nodded in agreement, watching Zack warily.

"Then what?" he asked slowly, starting to look a little more thoughtful than angry.

"I… wanted out. I was helping him as Phoenix," Monica explained. "I was trying to tell him how I had… gotten into this whole thing. He confronted me about it, last August. He pointed out… how I had been tricked. I had a breakdown, went a little crazy. He called the Peacemaker to help me."

It was like a switch had been turned, because Zack's expression went from angry to sudden, profound understanding at the mention of my mom's superhero name. That thoroughly startled me, because as far as I knew, Zack had only seen her when he was over at my house. He hadn't seen her professionally… had he?

 _If he had, she certainly wouldn't tell_ you _, you know,_ my brain pointed out. _Patient confidentiality and all that._

"Seriously?" he asked her, and she nodded slowly, looking at him curiously.

"She's been helping me," I added quickly. "Against Hammerfist, the Green Crow, Glacier Fang, Aeon Wasp, Shimmerling…"

"Wait… She's 'Phoenix's Shadow?'" he asked, and got nods from both of us in return.

"For about a half year now," Monica confirmed.

"Dude…" Zack said slowly. "Hey, that's where you got stuff about the academy, right?" We both nodded, and I resolved to never underestimate Zack again.

"Yes, I was trying to help you, all of you. I just wasn't sure-."

"We didn't know how much we could give the Bureau without them figuring out where it was coming from," I finished.

Zack just nodded a bit, and crossed his arms, seemingly waiting.

"I'm sorry Zack," Monica said finally, and I let her go as she crossed the floor to stand in front of him. He towered over her, very bright in the relative dimness of the stairwell. "I just… didn't really think I had a choice at the time. If I didn't try to get rid of you, worse things would happen to me. We had to, or we would have ended up like Speed, Lash, and Penny."

"Sucks to be you," Zack said pointedly.

"Kind of did. I don't know what I can do to make it up to you though," she said, looking up at him. I couldn't have imagined what it was like to be in Zack's place right now. He was an easygoing guy, but enough to forgive someone who had attacked him? Particularly when he had found her with someone he thought was his friend.

 _I_ am _his friend still, I hope._

Zack only seemed to be waiting, thinking, and I think both Monica and I forgot to breathe for a while.

"You seriously talked with the Peacemaker?" he asked, and Monica nodded. There was another tense moment, and then Zack suddenly seemed to relax.

"Ok," he said, abruptly stopped glowing, and sat down in a nearby chair.

 _Somehow I was expecting more yelling_ … I thought idly.

"Ok?" Monica asked, confused.

"Ok," he repeated. "Look, I'm stupid sometimes, but I'm not dumb. I'm pretty sure Warren's not being mind-melded or something. And his mom's upstairs, and she knows frickin' everything about good and evil. So… if you're here, you're not evil. And Warren's my bro, and I know he wouldn't dis his friends so… you must got some kind of good reason for going over to the Light Side. And it's kinda obvious why Warren didn't want to tell us."

Huh… that's the best, most succinct speech I've ever heard out of Zack… ever. And I was amazed he hadn't decided to start yelling at me. Or worse.

"Thanks," Monica said finally, and stepped away. I could see she was shaking, and I reached out and took her hand. Standing up to someone she had hurt had to have taken courage, particularly because she had probably been expecting to get punched in the face for her trouble.

"Ok, here's my thing. You guys are obviously stupid for each other. That's cool. You're trying to help us out, and help Warren out. Also cool. Just… if you really want to be a hero, _do your own damn thing and stop hiding behind Warren,"_ Zack said finally.

"The academy will kill me," Monica protested.

"Then I guess you really don't want to be a hero. All heroes have people that want to kill them."

"Not like the academy-."

"Dude, the academy _does_ want to kill us. So don't whine about it. Put up or shut up," he said plainly.

Monica gaped at him for a second and I came up behind her to put my other hand on her shoulder. I hated to admit it, but Zack was right. Monica had helped me. She had put her life on the line, she had gotten herself bruised and cut in fights, she had used her powers and risked her freedom in putting criminals behind bars, but it was always with me. I had never known her to do it on her own. I didn't think less of her because of it; she had a bunch of personal and perfectly legitimate reasons to be deathly afraid if someone caught her alone, in costume or out, using her powers. But if she started doing heroics on her own, or at least starting them on her own, it would go a lot towards showing she really meant to reform. If not to herself, at least to the public and the Bureau.

"I…" she started, and then trailed off, hanging her head. Zack had managed to hit a pretty sore spot, and I'm sure it wasn't entirely by accident. I was torn between wanting to support my girlfriend or my teammate, and clenched my jaw shut to keep from saying something equally stupid to both.

Zack looked a little uncomfortable at that, and then finally looked me in the face for the first time.

"I gotta talk to Warren," he said. Monica nodded and turned to go, but I pulled her around to face me, still holding onto her hand.

"I love you," I whispered. She blinked at me in astonishment and then smiled brilliantly. There were probably more dramatic and appropriate times to break out such a declaration, but most of them involved someone's imminent demise. I wasn't going to try to wait so long, or I'd end up losing my nerve. I wanted her to know and to know _now._

"I love you too," she whispered back, and kissed me quickly.

"I'll call you later," I said softly. Blushing, she finally turned away and walked upstairs, not looking back at either Zack or I. Zack stared at the stairwell for a second before shaking his head.

"Yeah, I thought so," he muttered.

"Thought what?" I asked.

"I thought you had a girlfriend," he said. "I mean, you'd go staring off into space and stuff, kinda like Ethan does when he's thinking about Chloe."

I very much thought I did _not_ stare into space dreamily, but wasn't going to contradict him.

"You guys were looking at each other the way Magenta and I do," he added, and caught my eye again. "People don't really get why we're together either."

"Thanks," I said finally.

"Don't get me wrong man, I think it sucks hardcore that of all the frickin' millions of girls out there who want to be your girlfriend, you had to pick _her_. But you're my bro. You trust her, and _she_ trusts her," he jerked his head over to Mom's side of the sanctum. "So I guess I gotta trust that you know what you're doin'."

"So are you…?"

"I'll keep my mouth shut. Magenta'd go A-1 ballistic, Will'd give you the hurt puppy-dog eyes 'bout why you didn't tell him, Layla'd be all nice and offended, and Ethan'd probably crap his pants," he said quickly, laughing a little. I had no trouble imagining any of that.

"So… are you actually gonna tell us anytime soon, or just going to wait for stuff to happen?" he asked.

"She can't go public until the academy is gone," I explained. Zack shook his head.

"Tall order, man," he said, with an odd rising of his eyebrow. I didn't like the implications there. What was she supposed to do? Take down the academy single-handedly to prove herself?

 _Well, that'd certainly put a lot in the good side of her karma, maybe even just enough to halfway balance the people she's_ tortured _over the years…_

_Damn. Damn, damn, damn!_

"I know," I said.

I felt something for Monica I hadn't felt for any other person, but no matter how it made me feel, neither of us had forgotten that she had spent several years as a full-fledged villain doing villainous acts. Even if most of it had been contained within the academy, it mitigated nothing. If she ever wanted to work as a Bureau-sanctioned superhero, she would need a lot more good karma than she had now. And we both knew it. I just hated having it pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess you do know. Look, are we going to get to the part where you kick my ass all around the sanctum tonight or what? If I get Guinea Pig Kung-Fued again I swear I'm going to do something that's gonna get me bit," he said at last, abruptly changing the subject.

I gave into the inevitable of Zack's firm need to focus on the mundane and normal, and dropped into my fighting stance.

* * *

_Later that night_

After Zack left, I probably set a new world record for dialing a phone number.

"So, you're still alive?" she said in greeting.

"Barely. I let him get in a few cheap shots. I owe him that for starters. He promised he wouldn't say anything," I said quickly.

"You have good friends," Monica said, her voice slightly shaky over the phone.

"Yeah. He's pretty good about keeping stuff to himself when he wants to," I tried to reassure her. And me.

"I know, I know. I wish…" she said, and then stopped. "I wish I could get to know them."

"Me too," I said. I had a sneaking suspicion she'd get along great with Magenta, once they got past the whole supervillain thing. "Zack thinks you need to take down the academy first."

I had meant it as a kind of joke, but I heard Monica make a very odd noise, a kind of strangled choke.

"I know. I just got horrible grades in Villainous Schemes and Plots, so it's a little hard to think about taking everything down," she said softly.

"Maybe because you never had a goal you really wanted to accomplish before," I tried to say lightly.

"Maybe you're right," she said thoughtfully, and trailed off into silence.

"I didn't really mean for tonight to go this way," I apologized, as the silence grew to awkward lengths.

"Me either, but I'm kind of glad it did," she said, her tone much brighter.

"I meant what I said. I would have said it earlier but-."

"We got interrupted. Find sometime where we won't get interrupted and tell me again. I won't mind," she said, and I could tell she was smiling.

"I'll do that," I said warmly.

I was just hanging up the phone when Mom came walking down the stairs.

"I saw them both out," she said, and I throttled down a momentary surge of anger. If she had known Zack was coming, she could have stopped him and-.

_And what? Someone was going to find out sooner or later, and it looks like it was better Zack than anyone else. She must have thought you could handle it._

I shoved away another surge of resentment that she would have sprung something like this on me, and took a few calming breaths.

_Mom put a lot on the line with not telling the Bureau about Monica in the first place. She has the right to-._

_Mess up your love life?_

I growled mentally, and Mom was looking at me rather frankly. She was probably getting all of this emotionally loud and clear, but she didn't look the tiniest bit repentant.

"I gave Zack just a few seconds to think all of this through logically. And that was all he needed. I think you're really going to need all of your friends standing by you when this finally all comes to light, and Zack honestly deserves to be the first to know," she said.

_That was true but…_

"You were using your powers on him?" I asked instead. It normally wasn't like her to push her abilities on the unwitting unless it was some kind of life-or-death emergency.

She looked at the floor for a second, then crossed to me and put her hands on my shoulders, locking her eyes with mine.

"We have to be careful Warren. This could break us, or someone else, if we aren't careful. Pay attention to your friends, and to her. I don't think they'll lead you wrong," she said firmly, and then dropped her eyes.

"Mom? If you're going to give advice, could you make it less cryptic?" I asked. She laughed a little and shook her head.

"Darling, all good advice is cryptic."

* * *

Zack kept his word. If he hadn't, I'm sure I would have been the first to know about it with some kind of yelling or fist to the face. It wasn't like Mom's powers would have kept him from turning us in if he really wanted to do it, not unless she used them to an extent that I knew she was unwilling to go.

I unfortunately didn't have a lot of time to get into any kind of in-depth discussion about it. Partially it was because Zack liked in-depth discussions about as much as he liked homework, and partially the spring thaw meant an upswing in supervillainy. Even most supervillains preferred to attack in nice weather.

Son of Silver did not make a return trip to Maxville, nor did any other of the Crew, or anyone else we could positively identify as being from the academy. Monica was of the opinion that having tested their theories, they wouldn't be back until they were completely ready. On the upside at least it meant they still were swallowing her continued loyalty. My friends were still clueless, but the Bureau was ominously silent about the whole thing.

Unfortunately, I didn't have endless free time to go find the academy masterminds and get the master plan out of them. At this point, it was more of a challenge just to keep my own life on track.

* * *

_April before graduation_

Monica and I slid into the ambulance from opposite sides, after we had managed to rescue a half-dozen club-goers from the clutches of the Hip-Hip Kiddo. His power was to make people dance, for which I was profoundly grateful we had fought him in the back alley and not on the street. I knew not all supervillains had class, but I didn't know I'd be suffering semi-permanent mental trauma from being attacked by a bunch of clubbers in mini-skirts being forced to do a Rockette kick-line.

"Setting his shoes on fire was really the only logical way to deal with him," she was saying.

"Yeah, but when he starting bawling that I had destroyed the source of his power, I almost felt sorry for him."

"But what about when he got the girl with the steel-toed combat boots to kick you right in the-."

"He deserved what he got coming to him," I said firmly. Even _thinking_ about where that kick had landed hurt.

Monica laughed heartily, and after a second, I joined her. I was laughing a lot more nowadays, enough so that I was having to forcibly curb myself in my friends' company. Magenta had made a few more comments about "happy, skippy Warren," that I didn't want her to follow up on.

We lapsed into silence for a while, listening a bit to the police scanner, snickering a little when the limping Hip-Hip Kiddo, his neon red and orange costume scorched, was escorted past the mostly-concealed ambulance to a squad car. Someone came by a moment later bearing a pair of melted sneakers in a plastic bag, and we both had to look away to keep from laughing loud enough to startle the police. The upside about using the ambulance to get to crime scenes was we could park very close and watch the aftermath with total impunity. People just tended to ignore it as part of the city scenery.

"You said you were going to tell me again sometime," Monica asked enigmatically after a few minutes.

"Tell you what?"

"What you said in your sanctum, back in January," she clarified with a somewhat shy smile.

"That I love you?" I asked. It was damn surprising how easy that was to say. I wasn't one to break out passionate declarations every few minutes, but if she wanted to hear it, I was more than happy to say it. Monica didn't exactly go into the coo-faced melting routine the fan girls went into whenever I said anything mildly positive about them, but she smiled back at me with a sincerity to make all of them look like poseurs.

"Yeah, that," she said. Then she leaned over to my side of the ambulance and kissed me. I wasn't exactly used to getting ambushed that way, but I figured I could get used to it in a hurry. The difference between her and the fan girls that tried to sneak a kiss in when I was pulling them out of danger was that I actually _wanted_ Monica to kiss me.

We weren't all over each other all the time, like my friends were upon occasion. Mostly it was because of privacy issues, but it seemed to make each time we could steal a few moments twice as sweet.

My hands were sliding through her hair, and at some point before coherent though ceased, I thought that if there were some kind of crisis right now, I'd fireball the damn radio. I wasn't sure if I was breathing or not, but with the feel of her lips on mine, and whatever the hell she was doing with her tongue… I came back to myself with a start when I smelled something scorching.

I jerked back from her so hard I must have pulled some muscles, and watched in kind of horrified fascination as she calmly covered her hands with the cuff of her shirt and patted out the smoldering parts of her hair. I was just trying to bring my temperature, and a few other things, back under control.

"Well, I guess I don't have to ask if you liked that," she said with an arched brow. I swallowed hard in embarrassment.

"I-."

"Don't apologize," she cut in, and leaned in again. I would have tried to move further back, but unfortunately my back was against the wall, in more ways than one. I had nearly lost control and burned her, and I shouldn't be wanting to-.

She reached up and placed two fingers on my temple, the same gesture she used to invoke her powers on me to get me out of my healing trance. It was a subtle threat, and also a reminder to keep control. It was also kind of…

_You are a sick puppy, you know that, right?_

_Shut up, I'm ignoring you._

"Warren, I love you," she said softly. "And I know when your friends are ready… we probably won't see each other very often. It's going to take time… and I don't know when we're going to be able to fight together. Just… consider this motivation."

I was going to ask "motivation for what?" when she kissed me again. She kept her fingers pressed to my temple, a potent reminder to keep my fire under control, and I reined back my temperature enough to prolong the kiss until I had to surface to breathe.

"Ok, I'm motivated," I said a little breathlessly as she finally retreated to her side of the ambulance. I had to blink a few times to get myself back in focus.

"I just don't want you to forget me when you join the Boy Scouts of Maxville," she said a little impishly. I cracked a smile as I imaged Layla's reaction to _that_ potential group name.

"My memory's not that bad," I pointed out, capturing her hand. For a moment she looked oddly sad, then smiled again.

"I'm not going to be able to make the graduation party, but I'll try to keep a lookout in case any party-crashers show up," she said lightly.

"Thanks," I said, and ran my fingers lightly over her palm. She got that oddly introspective look on her face again.

"Monica? You know I'm here for you, whatever you need," I said. That thoughtful look vanished into surprise.

"I know, it's just-."

"Look, I know Zack tried to lay everything at your feet, but you don't have to try to go at this alone," I said quickly. I had had a sneaking suspicion that ever since Zack had intimated that Monica should be the one to take down the academy, she had been hunting for a way to do it herself. Having a guilt trip like that laid down by one of her former victims had hit her pretty hard. And I had an idea that something like tonight might be a good-bye, if I let her.

"I won't," she said after a long moment, fairly reluctantly, and I felt a faint knot inside me ease.

"You told me not to forget you. You don't forget me either ok?" I reminded her. "Just because things are changing doesn't mean we're changing _us."_

She reached out her free hand to me and ran it through my hair, her fingers trailing down my cheek.

"I promise. I won't forget," she said with conviction.

* * *

_Graduation day, Sky High. Finally._

The gym was packed with all my friends' families, all of them armed with cameras and recorders, most of them dressed in at least a hint of their child's chosen color. Everyone else was doing that too, but Ethan's huge family made a very impressive wedge of orange on one side of the bleachers. There was even a certain amount of media attention; both from the school paper as well as the Bureau, who had some internal newspapers and newsletters they published. There had been a few around when I had graduated two years before, but there was a veritable flock of them now.

It was all because of Will, of course. The gang wasn't even going to get a more normal graduation party, because there was already one planned. There was a citywide celebration every year called the Superheroes' Ball, where the city showed its appreciation for the superheroes that protected it all year round. No so coincidentally, this was coinciding with Sky High's graduation this year.

Will was going to be presented with his parents as part of the Stronghold Three (though they weren't calling themselves that in public), as well as the leader of our group as the new defenders of Maxville. The Commander and Jetstream were going to officially hand over their city's defense to their son and his group while they continued with larger threats country and world-over. So this meant all of us had to be presented publicly with him. Hence the small swarm of reporters.

"I'm seriously sorry about all this guys. I didn't know it was going to be such a-."

"Circus?" Magenta filled it pointedly. Will nodded, sighing.

This also meant that our group would be going last, so that no one else would get buried under the attendant media storm our group was going to cause. Any swelled heads we would have gotten from all of this had been harshly squashed by the director's warnings a few months ago, and while I knew everyone was excited and proud to finally be able to get out there, they also knew it was going to be very tough.

Will didn't want to overshadow any of the other seniors either. His powers and heritage was a fluke, but unlike me he had both embraced it and was ready to deal with it.

We paid careful and close attention to all the other groups, not just to be polite, but also because they were our friends and soon-to-be fellow fighters. There was the Rain Forest Alliance; with a group who had each patterned themselves after jungle creatures. Like Jacob, the guy with six arms, dressed himself like a tarantula, or Troy, the guy with acid spit, wore a bombardier beetle costume. I couldn't fault him really, even though his costume was kind of silly; I dressed like a bird even though my powers had squat to do with flight.

The Illusionists included Rob, the Carbon Copy guy, and Jenny, who could turn herself into a ball, along with others from the Deceiver and Real-Shifter Clubs. Larry, the rock guy, was now president of Earth Club, and his group called themselves the Geogods. There was substantial eye-rolling going on when _that_ name was announced. Hive of One included those who could turn into or have control over insects, while the Iron Six were mostly from Strength Club, including their president who could turn himself into living iron.

I kept catching glances from the gang, mostly smiles and general head nodding. We had, at this point, fought every single person in the senior class during Gauntlet runs. We knew what they could do both alone and as a group, but it was impressive to see them all costumed and named. While we dared not be _over_ -confident, I think all of us were feeling confident enough of this group of new superheroes. I think the academy was going to get a run for its money.

It took at least two hours for the next-to-last group to finally get done, and now it was finally time for my friends to take the stage.

Zack stepped forward first, flashing a cocky grin at his family, his costumed father and sidekick sisters waving back enthusiastically. If I hadn't known he had found me with Monica a few months ago, I wouldn't have been able to tell it from his behavior. He had been just as casual with me as he had ever been, and hadn't showed the slightest hesitation in working with me during practice. Zack, I realized, was something of a bigger man than I was.

Slipping behind the provided screen for a quick-change, he emerged from the other side glowing brightly.

"I am Brilliance," he said, nobly refraining from adding "yo" or "dude" like I'm sure he wanted to.

Unlike me, everyone else had talked about his or her name and costume before graduation, which had culminated in a brainstorming session a month prior. The rest of us had helped Zack think up a new superhero name when even he had reluctantly admitted that using his real name would be kind of dumb.

Zack's super suit was a truly eye-smarting shade of neon yellow-green, topped with his silver trenchcoat, which had secret pockets for his light bombs and other stuff. For his disguise he wore a pair of wrap-around mirrored shades. He struck a bit of a pose while pictures flashed, and then gave way for Magenta.

She didn't even look at her family when she took the stage, probably because her brothers and cousins were whooping and hollering so much she was pretending she wasn't related to them. She emerged from behind the screen in her signature black and purple, a dark purple super suit topped with a short black jacket that hid most of her utility belt. Like Zack, she had taken sunglasses for her disguise, though hers were dark metallic purple rather than mirror-silver.

"I am Violet Cavey," she said proudly, and did a few quick shifts combined with some of her fighting moves, drawing applause from her family. Cavey, Magenta had informed us, was another word for guinea pig.

"The smart villains will get it and then underestimate me, and the dumb ones will still be trying to figure it out while I'm busy kicking their asses," she had informed us when she was explaining her name to the rest of the gang. Zack had suggested she do a few of her fighting moves in guinea pig form when she did her name announcement. Magenta asked him if he wanted a bite where the sun doesn't shine. Zack asked her if she really meant that with a ludicrous waggling of his eyebrows. That was the first time I had seen Magenta speechless.

The applause died away as Ethan mounted the stage, smiling a bit at his swarm of relatives as he slipped behind the screen. Stepping out, his costume was a simple liquid orange super suit with a matching domino mask, his utility belt nearly flat against his body and virtually invisible from its identical hue and material.

"I am Viscosity," he said a bit loudly, melting and then bouncing himself around the stage like a pinball. He said he made him a bit dizzy, but he had told us he didn't want a repeat of Power Placement. Just melting in and of itself looked fairly… unimpressive, particularly compared with Will or Layla. Magenta had been entirely understanding about it; adding her fighting moves to her name announcement had been Ethan's idea. Ethan finally resolidified and took his place with Magenta and Zack as Layla's name was called.

Layla smiled a bit at her family before finally coming out from behind the screen in the most elaborate costume in our group, well over and above mine. Unlike every other girl so far, Layla's outfit wasn't skin-tight. She had loudly and repeatedly over the years rejected the whole "artificial and unrealistic ideal of superhero feminine beauty," and had refused Spandex or other form-fitting materials on those principles. If Will had been disappointed, he had wisely kept it to himself. Four intense years of working out meant most girls were fairly happy with wearing Spandex, Magenta included. To Zack's profound relief, Layla hadn't persuaded Magenta to wear a more conservative costume.

Layla's outfit was a little like my mom's, but emerald green with ivy instead of white with feathers, and it was cut and armored so she could actually fight in it. Unlike Ethan's smaller domino mask, Layla wore a full-face mask in a kind of feminized version of the Green Man (as she had carefully educated us), with her hair loose behind her. She also wore a belt of flowers, its decorativeness disguising the fact it was also Layla's arsenal. Sturdy ivy vines, thorny roses, small creosote plants, stinging nettles, and even little cacti were intertwined with daisies and other flowers. She had finally ditched the idea of plant capsules a few months ago, for reasons she refused to name, which always involved Will coughing, turning red, and abruptly changing the subject.

Zack had suggested she go with the name "Mother Nature" to go with that outfit, to which Layla had replied tartly that she definitely didn't feel like someone's mother and she sure wasn't going to start now.

"I am the Rose Queen," she said, her voice sounding fairly impressive behind the mask as her flowers and vines grew and twinned all around her.

She stepped off to loud applause as Will finally walked to the stage. He took two deep breaths and flew out the other side of the screen. During the brainstorming session we'd had for costumes and names, Will had said, with bit of a sigh, that he was bowing to the inevitable in regards to his costume. He _was_ the son of the Commander and Jetstream, and they _would_ all be working together on occasion. He didn't want to blatantly stand out from them, and there were plenty of times were being easily recognized as their son would be very helpful.

Will's costume was very similar to his dad's, red, white, and blue with a white cape. A shield symbol in red and silver proclaimed his superhero name.

"I am Guardian," Will called, as Boomer, with dramatic timing, dropped the Power Placement car from the ceiling. Still hovering, Will caught it effortlessly with one hand, then crumpled it up as if it were a paper cup and casually (but carefully) tossing it behind him. Larry caught it as wild applause rang out from the Stronghold section of the gym.

Will had taken a name of his own choosing, rather than his parents' (or at least his dad's), opting for something protective rather than aggressive. Will just wasn't as gung-ho as his dad when it came to nearly anything and didn't want a name to make people think that. Just as well, Will's dad had an ego the size of his bench press score (though with some justification, to be fair) and I couldn't see Will acting like _that._

As the cheering swelled, I slipped out of my seat and to the stage, quick-changing behind the screen and joining my friends. There was a slight murmur of confusion from some when I appeared, but I also heard a few "It's _Phoenix!"_ in the kind of squealing fan-girl tones I had come to dread.

The rest of the gang was smothering smirks as I rolled my eyes behind my mask. With coordination wrought of endless practice, Will chivvied us into position for our group pictures. This, at least, he had had a lot of experience with, via his parents. If there was something Will _didn't_ know about heroic poses, it wasn't through lack of exposure.

I heard a few disappointed-sounding comments from my fan contingent as I moved to Will's right, clearly not taking a leadership position. Layla was on his other side, with Magenta next to her and Ethan next to me. Zack, the tallest person in our group, was right behind Will.

"We are the Champions of Justice!" Will called out proudly as the rest of the parents and reporters started snapping pictures.

* * *

_Last Month_

"Champions of Justice? Seriously?" Magenta asked with a quirked brow. "Will that's… lame."

"Very lame," Zack agreed.

"Yeah," I said, nodding with the other two. Ethan wasn't saying anything, which meant he probably didn't approve, and Layla only had a kind of vaguely encouraging smile on her face, so she wasn't exactly wild about it.

"Wait, I have a reason!" Will said, forestalling everyone's dismissal of his latest idea. Magenta waved at him to go on, but was scowling at her list of our potential group names as if they personally offended her.

We had been at this for nearly an hour and a half and still hadn't come up with anything everyone could agree on. Zack had a few "Brotherhood" names that Layla had lambasted for being sexist. Ethan had a few that were kind of obscure, Layla's weren't quite tough enough for us guys, and Magenta and I hadn't come up with anything useful.

"Ok, so a champion is someone who fights for someone else so they don't have it. They fight for the weak and oppressed against the cruel and tyrannical. And fighting for justice is just something heroes _do,_ " Will explained, surreptitiously referring to some notes.

Well, let's just say that despite muttering to the contrary, no one else came up with a better name the rest of the night.

* * *

_Back in the present_

"Dude, we are kind of a mötley crüe," Zack said through his teeth as our parents flashed pictures.

"Did I hear an umlaut in there? Because if I did…" Magenta said warningly

"Nope, nope, umlaut-free," Zack said quickly. "Just a motley crew, that's all…"

I repressed laughter as I kept an appropriately intimidating scowl for the pictures. Most of the other teams had gotten coordinating costumes, or even virtually identical ones except for color or certain accessories. At least most of them had some kind of insignia or color in common. But aside from Zack and Magenta's vaguely similar themes, the rest of us looked like we had all developed our costumes totally in private. The Champions of Justice _had_ no kind of theme, not at all. We were the most uncoordinated fashion disaster (according to some of the comments I heard) of the year.

 _Yeah, but just wait until you see us fight_ , I thought with a bit of satisfaction.

* * *

From the slight chaos of the Sky High gym, our newly made superhero team, as well as our superhero parents, descended into the pure chaos of downtown Maxville in what was probably our last trip in one of the flying busses of Sky High.

"It's going to be great this year, really, I've been there before, and they really pulled out all the stops," Ron Wilson, bus driver, was telling us. He was also attending, but didn't seem to mind ferrying us kids around. He wasted no opportunity to let people know _he_ had known all of us well before our fame. Or soon-to-be fame for most of us.

"Yeah… all the stops," Magenta said, giving me an oddly evil smile.

I had noticed Magenta had been honing her wit on me more than usual lately, to which she had responded, when I asked, "Zack asked me to give you a hard time." Apparently, that was my extended punishment for going out with Monica, like my banter with Magenta had been to pay her back for the Yellowstone incident. I sometimes wondered if Zack wasn't a little evil himself.

"What the hell now?" I muttered.

"Oh, just the new issue of People came out today," she said with a brilliant smile. With her sunglasses on she looked a little sinister.

"Yeah, and?" I asked with feigned boredom.

"You won first prize. I think your 'phans' stuffed the ballot box, but I really don't blame them," she said, reaching into her jacket and pulling out a rolled-up magazine. I unrolled it gingerly, and stared at the glossy cover imprinted with my own costumed face.

 _Phoenix, Sexiest Superhero Alive!_ the headline proclaimed. I stared at it, stopping my jaw dropping from a major effort, and had it yanked out of my hands by Magenta before I could set fire to the thing on principle.

"So, I think you're going to have at least two tons of squealing fangirls here, and for once you're going to have to deal with them," she said triumphantly. Everyone else on the bus was desperately trying to cover laughter and smirks as I must have looked about ready to dive out of the window of the bus.

"If you try to run, I'm going haul you over to them and hold you there," Will said cheerfully.

"Darling, you've managed to avoid them all for two years. I think you can spare a couple of hours to pose for pictures and sign autographs," Mom piped up from the back. The Strongholds were barely containing laughter, and I glared at everyone. I liked being acknowledged as a superhero, but…

"Trust me Phoenix, the fangirls are the least of your worries," the Commander advised. Jetstream starting laughing next to him, and I sighed in resignation. Being wrestled to the ground by Will and his dad on national television was _not_ the way I wanted to be introduced to our group.

Careful planning had us arriving just after sundown, with huge spotlights marking the entrance to the Maxville Convention Center, the sight of this year's Superheroes' Ball. Will's parents had flown in ahead of us nearly a half-hour ago after we had touched down, but we decided not to. Using Layla's vines for a harness, Will could easily lift all of us, but it wouldn't exactly looked particularly dignified to have us all tangled up in vegetation for our first public appearance together. Hence we had taken advantage of the mayor's use of a limousine.

In theory, with all of Maxville's superheroes at this party, it should have left the city undefended from the schemes of clever or opportunistic villains. In practicality, anyone crass enough to interrupt the Superheroes' Ball got their asses handed to them on a platter. It had become another one of those unwritten rules that supervillains flaunted at their peril. I initially hadn't believed it until Ethan had pulled out the records of supervillain attacks on Maxville. Except for a few occasions back when it had first started, there had _never_ been a villainous attack on Maxville during the Superheroes' Ball in the last forty years. The academy _might_ be the ones to break that though, so we still all carried our emergency phones.

It was with that in mind that we pulled up outside the convention center, more worried about being presented to the mayor than any possible supervillain attacks tonight. However, it had given all of us a very long look at the thousands of people who had lined the sidewalks for a glimpse of their favorite heroes. And some of us were taking less well than others.

"I'm gonna puke," Zack announced in a low voice as Will was about to open the door to the red carpet.

"Do that and they'll catch it on national television," Magenta warned.

"Maybe they'll think it's your power," Ethan opined.

"Super puke? Aw man…" Zack muttered, swallowing hard a few times. The cheering from outside was reaching a new pitch, and we could hear the loud echoes from the announcer beginning to penetrate the noise.

"… _the newest heroes of Maxville, lead by the son of the Commander and Jetstream…"_ he was staying.

"That's us guys," Will said, looking back at everyone and trying to smile encouragingly. Of all of us, Will wasn't wearing a mask, having taking his parents' idea of disguising himself in reverse. Zack finally nodded back, and took a deep breath as Will flung open the door dramatically and strode out. The rest of us piled out behind him, blinking a little in the glare.

"Dude, they must have had someone with super-printing skills or something," Zack muttered. When we could finally see past the glare, we could see the walls of the convention center were festooned with huge, multistory banners of Maxville's heroes. Will's parents, Zack and Ethan's dads, Magenta's folks, Layla's mom, and even my mom. And right next to them… was a huge poster of us!

"Didn't they like take that maybe an hour ago?" he asked rhetorically.

" _Now presenting, the Champiooooooooooooooooons of Justice!"_ the announcer boomed as we all stared in shock.

"Kids, close your mouths, you're look like you're catching flies," Jetstream admonished quietly. Her and the Commander had managed to sneak up on us while we were still gaping at the walls.

Our jaws snapped shut as Will's parents turned us around to face the TV cameras. There must have been ten times as many reporters and journalists here as there had been at school, which was giving everyone else a rather rude and brutal introduction into what a post-fight media storm looked like. Well, better to get it over with here…

"Citizens of Maxville! We thank you for your continued support over the years. Fighting crime is easy when we know we have such devoted fans!" Jetstream opened grandly, waving and smiling at the crowd. "And now we want you to know a second generation of superheroes stands ready to defend you in your time of need…"

She called each of us forward along with our superhero parent or parents, introducing us and letting the reporters fire away questions. However, the point of the Superheroes' Ball was to let the fans actually see and talk to their heroes, so the questions were blessedly kept to a minimum. Someone asked the expected question about why I, an independent hero with such a history with the Commander's son, would be joining his group.

"Guardian needs someone on the ground to help out the team. He's always got his head in the clouds," I had said, in a pre-packaged quote that I cringed a bit to say. But it got a quick laugh and kept people from asking anything else leading. The Peacemaker had always shut down reporters who asked questions about her husband, and always made them feel horribly guilty about it too. Best to not let them think they could get the information from me either.

I gave way for Brilliance and Electro-Man, trying to drop back into the crowd of superheroes a bit. I could see a rather intimidatingly large block of red and pink over on one side of the ropes, and I was trying to delay the inevitable as long as a could.

"Check out Warren's Estrogen Brigade," Magenta muttered quietly to the rest of us, provoking huge guffaws of laughter from everyone else. "Aren't you going to go say hello?" she asked with poisonous sweetness.

"In a minute," I said, teeth clenched.

"Nonsense! No time like the present," the Commander said heartily, taking my arm in a deceptively gentle iron grip and pulling me along.

He hauled me right in front of the huge crowd of Phoenix Phans, mostly girls, all of them in pink and red, most of the waving posters, including a few of the cover of this week's People magazine.

 _My God, there must be hundreds of them…_ I thought faintly. This was like Valentine's Day at Medic-Co. Times a thousand.

"Go have fun," the Commander said with a smile, and gave me a little push. Which translated into me having to do a spin and half flip just to keep from falling on my face. The phans all cheered with an embarrassing excess of enthusiasm, and I spared a glance over my shoulder.

Will was being mobbed with his parents, while the rest of the gang was suddenly finding newly-minted fans. With their superhero parents or parents, everyone was getting a quick, brutally practical lesson in meeting the press. That made me feel a little less singled-out, and I turned back to the wall of red and pink.

"Phoenix!" they all exclaimed in perfect chorus. I froze; I had no idea exactly what to say.

"Uh… hi," I got out finally.

The subsequent squealing nearly broke my eardrums.

* * *

At the end of the two hours, the announcer called out that the superheroes would now be joining the mayor and city officials for dinner, allowing all of us a graceful way of extracting ourselves from our fans.

"Wow Phoenix, I didn't know lipstick was part of your costume," Magenta said cheerfully when I rejoined the group.

Frantically I tried to scrub the last of it from my face. While I had gotten mobbed, hugged, and randomly kissed (amongst other things), it hadn't been too bad. At least all of them had been nice, even if some had been a bit pushy. A few of the artists that had sent me some of my favorite drawings had shown up, and some of the people I had saved, directly or indirectly, had been there too. They were at least less shrill and more gracefully appreciative. However, despite all the pictures I had smiled for, and all the autographs I had signed, I wasn't going to let my friends know I had enjoyed any of it. I had a reputation to maintain.

"Not doing that again," I muttered as expected.

"Why? Looked like you were having fun," Magenta said with a bit of unholy glee.

"If I weren't indestructible, I'd have hearing loss, and if these lenses in my helmet weren't photo-sensitive, I'd be blind from the flashbulbs," I said shortly.

"Hey, same here and I'm not even that popular yet," she said with a broad smile.

"At least a dozen people grabbed my ass," I growled.

"It's very grabbable," she said with a nod.

"Brilliance, a little help here?" I asked a bit plaintively. The look on Zack's face made it clear, though, that I wasn't getting any help from that quarter.

"Nope, you just gotta deal with it man," he said.

"Great…" I started, and then stopped myself from jumping when my mom put her hand on my shoulder.

"He loved it," she proclaimed loudly, and Ethan nearly choked beside me.

"Good thing you don't have a girlfriend, or she'd be jealous, all those girls kissing you," Layla teased. Mom's hand tensed slightly on my shoulder, infusing me with a thread of calm so I wouldn't inadvertently say something or look too horrified. Zack had fallen quiet, but Layla couldn't notice in the press of people around us. I only gave her a patented scowl as we were finally swept inside the convention center.

A half hour later, I think we were all wishing we had stayed outside. The elaborate dinner with the major and city officials was eight kinds of boring, with improbably-named types of food served in between interminable speeches droning on about the great appreciation the city had for superheroes. Zack had fallen into that kind of slack-faced stupor I knew meant he was asleep with his eyes open, and Ethan nearly fell into his soup once.

"Is it always this bad?" I asked Mom finally. Even the ice sculptures of Maxville's heroes that were scattered on the tables and melting into amusing shapes weren't going to distract us from the inherent snore-fest at the podium.

"Sometimes worse," she said with a smile fixed firmly on her face. "I deal with these all the time. I honestly think they should be banned under the Geneva Convention. There's a reason we only allow these things once a year."

"You think I should do that thing I did on the Fourth of July?" I muttered, and had my entire end of the table trying to choke back laughter. That proved to be the last solid laugh we got for the end of the night, as one of the city councilmen stabbed us with a disapproving glare (as much as one can disapproved of a bunch of grown men and women in tights and capes that saved the city on a daily basis).

Yawnaciousness aside, the mayor at least sounded sincere in his appreciation, even if he couldn't get it across without meandering through half a dozen other political subjects. I decided to see if next year we couldn't have a fan-only night or something. At least they were mildly entertaining!

It was just after midnight by the time we got home, tired from almost non-stop partying all day long. Everyone's family wanted to have a quieter little graduation celebration of their own, but we had barely gotten out of our cars and started heading towards our homes when there was a sharp ringing noise from Will's pocket.

"What the…?" Will said, digging out his new emergency phone. "Yes?"

He listened for a second, and then cupped his hand around the phone.

"Get back into costume guys," he warned, and listened for another few seconds.

_No way, not tonight, not right after graduation, not on the night of the Ball…_

"There's trouble downtown," Will said succinctly as he snapped the phone shut. "Big trouble, downtown."


	39. Dinosaur Rodeo!

"Will, we're going to have to delay the rest of your party-," Mr. Stronghold was saying as he walked over to us, then stopped abruptly at seeing his son holding his emergency phone.

"Saurian Lord is threatening to unleash his dinosaurs downtown unless he gets ten million dollars," Will said a bit nervously.

"The mayor doesn't negotiate with supervillains," Mrs. Stronghold said evenly. "Will, the Mad Collector is trying to steal the Statue of Liberty. We have to be in New York-."

Muted conversation from everyone else's parents started to get louder as everyone started to talk at once.

"There was a massive break-out at the zoo Layla, they need me. Someone spotted The Ringmaster," Mrs. Evans was saying.

"We got the call too, they want us to round up the bigger animals before they escape-," Magenta's parents started.

"-something wrong at the dam-," that was Ethan's dad.

"-massive explosion at the power plant, half of Metro-city just blacked out," Zack's dad was commenting.

"-hostage situation by the Hate-Monger, I need to get to Los Angeles…" Mom trailed off.

"They get started earlier every year, don't they?" Mr. Stronghold said with a bit of an off-hand laugh. "Will, I'm sorry we won't get to see this, but we know you'll all do great."

Will's parents pulled him over for a quick embrace, as everyone did the same around me, smiles and encouraging words flying thickly between parent and child. I knew I was frowning and trying to hide it. Yeah, some villains started pulling off their schemes on the heels of the Superheroes' Ball just so they could take advantage of tired heroes, but this seemed awfully convenient.

Mom caught my eye briefly, and I felt a surge of encouragement from her. I quickly pulled her in for a hug, trying to suppress my unease and probably failing miserably to her.

"Good luck," I said.

"Be careful," she said more seriously, looking me in the eyes with a piercing gaze.

A faint thread of fear was tightening my gut, but I ignored it. Mom at least knew and was acknowledging what was going on. Probably everyone else was too, at least deep inside, but you'd never know it from their expressions.

With a few quick good-byes, everyone had scattered within two minutes, leaving us alone on the street. Will jerked his head towards his backyard, and we double-timed it to find a half-scrap of privacy to change.

"Academy?" Will asked _sotto voce_ as we walked.

"Duh," Zack said pointedly.

"That's the point," Ethan said quickly. We didn't need to say anything else as we scattered quickly to change. The academy wanted to hurt us on our home ground, but then retreat to _their_ home ground before anyone could retaliate. And they definitely didn't want all of our parents anywhere near to overwhelm them.

"I just think they didn't want to say it out loud," Ethan continued as we gathered back together, Layla whipping her vines around Will and us both. This might have been a slightly undignified way of travel, and not how we wanted to be filmed at the Superheroes' Ball, but it was the flat-out fastest way to get us where we needed to be.

"No kidding. Let's go!" Will said, and Ethan and Magenta shifted for the trip as Will took to the air, towing us below him. Those two stayed shift not to reduce weight (Ethan's mass didn't even change when he shifted, and weight honestly didn't matter to Will) but to reduce air drag. Magenta was safely tucked in Zack's pocket for the flight, while Ethan rested inside a pitcher plant, courtesy of Layla.

Our neighborhood fell away in a pattern of lights as Will sped towards downtown. Loud bangs, crashes, and what sounded like muted explosions greeted our ears as we left residences for businesses, and finally began to see things moving amongst the skyscrapers of Maxville's downtown.

"They didn't even wait!" Will cried indignantly.

"Betcha the mayor mouthed off about us," Zack muttered, jutting his head forward to try to get a better view. The tradeoff with Zack's powers was that although he could see clearly in even the brightest light, he had crappy night vision. Massive shadows were moving amongst the streets, and we were catching glimpses of something enormous running through the streets.

"They're huge!" Layla cried, pointing downward.

"Way bigger than they should be," Will called.

I stared down at the three dinosaurs rampaging through the streets of Maxville, childhood memories of reading books about them and looking at fossils barely jiving with what I was seeing below me. The skeletons I had seen on museum field trips during school had nothing on these things. The tyrannosaurus rex must have been nearly five stories high, and the triceratops and stegosaurus on flanking streets were equally oversized. I idly wondered how the hell this Saurian Lord had made these critters. And how he was controlling them. Ethan had come up with a blank on him, which had further argued for academy involvement. Growing creatures this large from scratch would have been incredibly difficult, even for a skilled mad scientist, and his willingness to risk three of them in a fight warned of either typical supervillain overconfidence, true madness, or some kind of plan.

All things considered, we were pretty much anticipating the third.

"Ok, ok, shoot, we got to get everyone clear… Violet, Viscosity!" Will called, pointing down to the streets where the triceratops and stegosaurus were running, tossing aside cars, bashing into buildings, and generally causing as much mayhem as possible. Not so coincidentally, they were heading right towards the entertainment districts, where some of the clubs were just getting started. Far too many people, drunk and tired, would be stumbling around in the streets, offering themselves up as potential victims.

"You two are on crowd control. We'll take care of the T-Rex and then meet up with you," he called. "Brilliance, I'm going to come in fast, you blind him, I'll drop everyone off, then I'm flying up to punch him."

"Vi, V, go left and right when we land. Rose, you and I gotta be ready to take the T-Rex down once Guardian reels him. Guys, don't get cute, use something stronger than the stun-rays on these things," I finished. We had done something like this in school before, and it was amazing how fast everything came together when things were on the line.

"Where's Ron Wilson when you need him?" Magenta squeaked in indignation from Zack's collar as will started to descend.

"Japan. They're having a big rogue mecha problem, Dad told me before he left," Will said shortly, and Zack repressed a laugh.

"On the count of five," Will said, and began a steep dive.

"Five... four…"

The shining sides of the skyscrapers reflected us dizzyingly as we descended.

"Three…"

Zack had gone pale as he realized exactly how ginormous the T-Rex was.

"Two…"

It was terrifyingly close, roaring loud enough to crack windows…

"One!"

Ethan and Magenta shifted back as Layla retracted her vines. We all tucked and rolled with the impact as we dropped the last few feet, fanning out in an arc. I felt pretty good that we had managed to pull off that maneuver without anyone falling on their face. Ethan and Magenta ran left and right at the same instant Zack triggered the light bomb, Will swooping up again over our heads. It was too bright for me to see, but a loud _crack_ followed by a muted roar told me Will had delivered one vicious uppercut to the T-Rex.

The glare faded, allowing Layla and I to uncover our eyes and got to work. Taking one look at the heavy, pebbly hide, Layla whipped out the thorny rose vines and began to bind the dinosaur up, as I lashed fire out across its snout. Another loud roar of anger made me smile grimly as Zack pulled out a sickly green raygun. It was a nausea ray, as opposed to his usual stun ray. We had learned from our last tangle with Cutter's Crew, how the stunners were inversely proportionally effective with mass. Now was not the time to dink around.

Zack took careful aim, striking the T-Rex right in the face with a triumphant yell. And nothing happened.

"What the-?" he started, and then began to back up with me as it strained against Layla's vines.

"I can't hold it!" she called, even as more and more vines started to lash out.

"Save your strength. Guardian, hit it again!" I called on the com to Will. With three massive creatures on the loose, the last thing we needed was Layla to get power-exhausted this early in the night.

I saw Will whip back down in a tight arc, streaking towards the T-Rex, fists extended to slam it again. I kept whipping fire to each side of its head, making it reluctant to lunge for us, and Zack has switched out his non-lethal weapons for a more damaging heat ray. Anything capable of stunning or sickening something that big would kill anything else, and Zack wasn't going to go oh-for-two tonight. Jaw clenched, he backed up in tandem with me. The T-Rex jerked, snapping more vines, and I kept my eyes nailed skyward.

Blinding light filled my vision, followed by a booming crash of thunder. Layla yelled in pain next to me, and I hissed, blinking away tears. The lenses in my helmet had darkened in reaction, but it had been so fast I was still seeing spots. I kept fire dancing on my hands, but nearly lost it at Zack's yell next to me.

"Lightning, lightning, he got hit, it _swallowed_ him!" he howled in simultaneous awe and disgust.

It took me half a second to process that, in which the T-Rex looked down at us from its great height, licking its chops thoughtfully, its eyes terribly clear for a creature that was supposed to be blinded. _Lightning hit Will while he was flying, he fell, and the T-Rex swallowed him?_ I thought incredulously. _I sure hope they caught that for the morning news…_

"Skybolt!" Zack said quickly, while Layla started not-quite-screaming into her com.

"Guardian! Guardian, answer me!"

There was a faint groan over the com; Will was still conscious. It would take a hell of a lot more than one bolt of lightning to take him down.

"Stop playing around with the dinosaur and get out of there," I said to him, hoping to cut through his grogginess. I was violently suppressing a more extreme reaction, like charging into there like a moron to help get Will out. Layla shot me a disgusted look through her mask, but at least I had stopped her from getting any more worked up. Will would be fine; a dinosaur's stomach might be disgusting, but unless it was filled with molten metal or something, Will would only be dirty, not dead.

"Everyone listen, Skybolt's somewhere out there, watch your back!" I called to Ethan and Magenta. Hopefully Will or I would be more tempting targets, but it would dumb to assume they wouldn't go after lone members of our team, given the opportunity.

We had a few extra problems of our own if Skybolt, or any of the others from the academy were up there. With Zack and myself being such bright and obliging targets, we would be next in line for special delivery lightning bolts. I grabbed the others' wrists and hauled them to the shelter of an overhang.

" _No, no, no! Stupid, ugly, drama-queen, asshat, punk-boil, son of a inbred gecko!"_ I heard Magenta yelling in her squeaky shifted voice over her com. Zack choked back laughter even as he leveled his heat-ray at the T-Rex. Apparently Magenta was having fun with the stegosaurus.

I flung two more volleys of fire at the T-Rex as Zack zapped at its chest, and smiled tightly as it actually staggered back a pace.

Then it began to lurch back and forth suddenly, swaying violently, each sway accompanied by a loud metallic gonging noise. Everyone was getting thoroughly confused when Will's voice broke into our reverie.

 _"This. Is. A. Robot!"_ Will shouted, each word punctuated by another gong. Everyone was startled into laughter as we realized Will was zipping around inside its stomach like a pinball, crashing into its sides, looking for a way out.

"Hey Guardian, don't steer that thing into a skyscraper!" I called. Layla glared, and I shut my mouth on any further quips. Truthfully, I was quipping to keep a faint thread of fear at bay. Using robots this big was only a few steps down from using actual animals of this size. The academy had been founded by a technopath, and was supposed to have more than a few in its ranks. This "Saurian Lord" that was supposed to be controlling these dinosaurs would have a lot more tricks up his sleeve if he actually had technopathic powers.

 _"Guys, guys, something's wrong, something doesn't sound right!"_ I heard Will yell into the com, his voice echoing strangely from the T-Rex's innards. I was about to snark back something about how exactly Will would know what did or did not sound right, considering his vast personal experience with robot dinosaurs, when I heard the noise too. It was a muffled _whumphing_ sound, something I recognized, in moment of pure fear, as a lot of fire igniting all at once.

A split second later, the T-Rex opened its maw, the inside glowing luridly, and I reacted on pure reflex, shoving Zack and Layla to either side as it breathed out a huge gout of flames. It caught me square, shoving me back slightly, but doing little worse than tickling. The building behind me didn't fare so well, as the awning burst into flame and the windows shattered. Over the com, Will yelled in pain.

 _He got caught right in the middle of it..._ I realized, stomach churning.

"We're in a freaking Godzilla movie!" Zack cried with remarkable accuracy.

" _Shooting freaking laser beams from its eyes!"_ I heard Magenta's voice break over the com, and wondered idly what Ethan's triceratops was doing. He couldn't talk while he was shifted, so we just had to trust that he was taking care of things on his end. We just needed to do the same on our end!

"Rose, bind and burn," I said, ducking back into view, literally drawing fire away from my teammates. Lightning be damned at this point, we had to get Will out of that thing.

Bind and burn was a technique Layla and I had developed for things just like this. She would bind something up with resinous plants, and I would burn them. At the very least we could burn off its protective layer and expose more of its inner workings. Then it would be a hell of a lot easier to see where we could throw a wrench in its works.

It was a sign of how upset Layla was that she didn't even hesitate; she hadn't liked this maneuver very much, just because it seemed to so cruel. We would never do this on a living thing, but it was still slightly disturbing to watch it in action.

The dusty-looking creosote plants began to circle around the T-Rex, who snarled and lunged, caught short by the heavy vines. Layla wasn't holding anything back at this point, but I was worrying about how warm things were going to get inside. She could, and had, increased the amount and volatility of the resin until it was a step short of explosive. It would definitely not be pleasant for Will, but…

I caught Layla's eyes for a second when she nodded at Zack and I to start burning, and quickly quashed my reluctance. If we didn't get Will out and out _now_ , there were going to be consequences. Unpleasant, plant-based consequences.

"It's going to get hot in there Guardian, hang on!" I called, and let the fire fly.

The T-Rex went up in a sheet of flames and metallic roaring, synthetic skin falling from it in melted globs, revealing the metal skeleton below. In the middle was something like a huge tank, now beginning to bulge out on both sides from Will's repeated hits. The fire was intensely hot, enough to make Layla and Zack take several steps back, and I started to feel a little sick. Will was tough, but this was a damn inferno…

" _Warren,"_ a faint voice whispered in my ear. I kept an eye on the T-Rex even as I tried to suppress my shock. That was Monica's voice. I had more than one com channel built into my helmet for just this reason; in case she needed to communicate with me. But why in the middle of this fight, with everyone else all around?

 _"Warren, Guardian's hurt, but it's not bad. Burns on his head and neck, everywhere that's not covered. He's fine,"_ she whispered. _"Second degree burns at best, easy."_

I breathed a smothered sigh of relief, feeling unleavened gratitude for her right then. I had been imagining all kinds of horrible things...

"Is Skybolt here?" I whispered back, barely moving my lips. I was a few steps ahead of the others, and they shouldn't be able to tell or hear what she was saying, considering Monica was on a different channel than they were, but caution was too well integrated at this point to drop.

 _"Yes, he's here. And Brady. Saurian Lord,"_ she added, before I could ask. _"I think they're on top of Anderson Tower."_

"How's he controlling these things?" I asked.

 _"Short-range transmitter, has to be. There's no technopath at the academy strong enough to control three robots this big simultaneously,"_ she said quickly.

I knew a moment's wild hope as a plan sprang into my mind, fully-formed.

"Thanks," I whispered back.

In the few seconds of conversation, most of the creosote had burned itself out, revealing the smoldering-hot robotic core of the T-Rex in all its mechanical glory. It looked a hell of a lot freakier this way than it had before. A few more dents appeared in its middle as Will renewed his assault on the inside, but I heard a few near-curse words as the hot metal made it painful to do.

"Brilliance, I need you to short this thing out," I said.

"Dude, I can't stop something this big!" he protested, moving up next to me. The T-Rex was moving slowly, jerking its limbs out from the remnants of the vines; the fire had obviously done a lot of damage, and I was smiling fiercely.

"This hunk of metal has a transmitter in it somewhere. You can handle that, right?" I asked. Layla was lashing out again with more vines, trying to keep the fire-breathing monstrosity in one place as she listened to our plan with one ear.

Zack's ability to fuzz out electronics had basically topped out at frying a laptop. A gleeful Coach Boomer had tried that experiment, to Ethan's everlasting horror. And that particular attempt had left Zack unable to glow for several hours. He just flat-out wasn't powerful enough to take down huge robots. But just the transmitter…

"Ok, ok… Dude, where is it?" he asked, looking at the struggling, smoldering mechanical T-Rex with trepidation.

"It's usually in the head," I said, remembering Mad Science class and silently thanking Mr. Medulla for teaching us Basic Mecha-mechanics. I looked over at Layla. "Can you get him up there? I'll distract it."

Zack looked less than thrilled by the prospect of being held up by vines next to those big metal teeth, but to his credit, he didn't hesitate.

"Go!" he said, and Layla switched her attention from the T-Rex to Zack.

 _"Guys, it's sealed off. This thing is really tough…"_ Will's voice broke across our coms, and two more hard bangs from inside the robot made it stagger and finally go to its knees. There was a muted explosion off in Ethan's direction, and a few Mandarin expletives, co-opted by Magenta, being screamed from her side. We were slowly coming to a three-way head.

"Now!" I yelled, and slung more fire at the robot, keeping its attention on me, and not on the vine-wrapped morsel sneaking up on its other side. It slid forward and snapped its jaws at me, bringing its head low, and Layla all but dropped Zack on top. A bright burst of light, just short of a photon bomb in intensity, exploded from atop the T-Rex. With a grinding of gears and a shaking of the earth, it slammed to the ground with force enough to throw me to my knees. Two seconds later, I saw Will rip through its side, his face angry red from the burns, and most of his hair singed off, but seemingly no worse for the wear.

"Guardian, top of Anderson Tower!" I called, pointing to a glass skyscraper just behind him. No further explanation needed, Will pushed skyward, his path darting left and right, not tempting another lightning strike.

His caution was needed, because just after he started skyward, more lances of lightning rained down on him.

"Go Guardian, go, go, go!" Zack cried, giddy with exuberance that he had managed to down the dino-bot. Layla and I finished hammering the transmitter into melted pulp as Zack gleefully crowed out to Ethan and Magenta how to take them down. Skybolt was so focused on taking down the larger threat of Will that he had no time for us on the ground.

 _"I see them, I see them. Come on, come on, not in my city, not in Maxville,"_ Will chanted. _"Cover your ears!"_ he barked over the com, and Layla gasped as she saw him suddenly accelerate. This was going to be loud…

 _"BOOM TIME!"_ Will roared, and we all clapped our hands over our ears as he streaked over the building, shattering the sound barrier, stunning and deafening the unseen supervillains.

 _"Yeah!"_ I roared from below, and I heard identical shouts of triumph over the coms from Ethan and Magenta.

 _"They're down, they're down, the dinosaurs are down!"_ was eventually what I got from the ensuing chaos.

"Guardian, do you have them?" Layla asked, breathing a deep sigh of relief. We actually had time to look around now, and though the place looked like a war zone, we had managed to stop the robots before they had gotten to the entertainment district and the more vulnerable citizens.

 _Eh, so we're messy. We'll get better,_ I thought with a smirk.

 _"Yeah, I have Skybolt and Saurian Lord. I… I think I overdid it,"_ Will's voice came in more softly over the com, and the three of us shot worried looks at each other.

"Get them down here," I said in the same tone. Now that the chaos has receded to an acceptable level, people were starting to emerge, beginning with reporters.

"Brilliance, Rose, keep them busy?" I asked, and with quick nods, I headed around the hulk of the T-Rex's body, where Will, laden with two unconscious bodies, found me.

Skybolt looked more or less like I had remembered him, tall and thin, with thick streaks of white through his hair. He wore a suit of metallic iron gray, shot through with white and gold lightning bolts, his face covered with a half mask. Saurian Lord was wearing some kind of ridiculous barbarian getup, little more than a loincloth and lizard skin cape, but had a very high tech-looking widget clipped to his belt. Both of them were bleeding from the ears and were dirty and bruised from where they had fallen on the roof.

I felt nothing immediately wrong with them from my powers, no matter Will's concerns, and just checked them over quickly for anything else.

"I think they're fine Guardian, you just knocked them out," I opined softly, kneeling beside them.

"I know they're not-. I mean, I didn't want to punch them at that speed, and I thought that would get them both at once-. Um… Look, I know they're probably ok, but you remember what they told us? That these guys would rather die than get taken prisoner? I just wanted to make sure they didn't have anything on them or something…"

I hissed in sudden understanding. But I really, really didn't want to do a body-cavity search of these two on the street though.

"Call the Bureau, tell them who we have," I said, and then jerked Will down by his cape before he could wander off too far. "And hold still for a second. Throw me off if this gets too painful."

Will didn't have time to protest before I dropped myself into trance to take care of his burns. The news really didn't need to see him like that, and best to have people thinking he was pretty much immune to fire. Better that than the alternative.

The practice I had gotten with Monica over the past two years had made me a lot faster, and considering that Will wasn't that bad off, he shoved me away gently after just a few minutes.

"Didn't want your parents to see you like that," I said as I blinked myself back to reality. Other than the fact Will had more of a buzz cut now than his usual mop-head, he didn't look too bad at all.

"Yeah, ballistic parents, very bad," Will laughed, and pulled out his emergency phone to call for a pick-up group.

The bright camera lights were drowning out Zack's glowing by this point, and I urged Will to go face the press.

"The second time is easier. I'll keep my eyes on these two punks," I told him. Let him have his moment of triumph alone.

And then the second he was out of earshot, I called Monica.

"Your friends are amazing," she said in greeting. "Honestly, I thought they were going to get trampled but…"

"Violet and Viscosity are pretty good at not getting crushed," I said, laughing in relief.

"You captured someone?" she asked more quietly, and I could almost hear her wincing when I described what had happened to her two "classmates."

"Twenty bucks says they'll have escaped or be dead within two days," she said flatly.

"No bet," I said grimly, and regarded the two on the ground with distaste. A very sick part of me wanted to end this, right here, right now. And it would be so very easy… _Fuck this_ , I snarled mentally, jerking myself out of my black mood before I could go any farther.

If I didn't put a half-ounce of trust into someone else at this point, I was going to go messily insane. The Bureau would be more careful with these two; Will had warned them specifically.

"Look, why didn't they send more people against us? Two against six isn't exactly good oods," I asked instead.

"Skybolt's certifiable. He might have been an intentional sacrifice," she said harshly, and I could hear her holding back tears. The academy was taking out the trash. And she could have been chosen with the same ruthlessness, or could be at any future time if they decided she wasn't necessary. As long as it existed, it held the power of her life and death in its hands.

"Hey, Monica…" I started, wanting to try to raise her spirits up. Mentioning the academy always tended to get her pretty depressed these days, and I wanted to distract her before we both ended up sinking ourselves. There was something very ironic about me having to be the cheery one upon occasion.

"Phoenix!" I heard Will call behind me.

"Gotta go," I whispered, and hit the off button. The Bureau team had arrived to take custody of our supervillains, and Will was waving for me to come join the crowd. Swallowing lingering resentment, I went to submit myself to the lights of the media.

* * *

_The next afternoon, Phoenix's Sanctum_

"This picture officially rocks!" Magenta exclaimed, holding up a big picture of her, unshifted, riding the back of the stegosaurus, apparently punching it in the back of its head. She actually had an electrical slap-cap in her hand, which was how she had managed to disable the transmitter, but it looked like she was getting ready to do some kind of crazy kung-fu move on it.

Ethan hadn't gotten anything quite as cool. After discovering his triceratops had the ability to throw electricity from its horns, he had melted and literally thrown himself down its throat. Then he'd used one of the few tools he could actually manipulate while shifted to throw a wrench in its works, disabling its transmitter from inside and grinding the thing to a halt. While not as spectacular as our flambéed T-Rex, it had been a hell of a lot more effective with ten times less the property damage.

* * *

Skybolt and Saurian Lord, Monica's gloomy predictions aside, had neither died nor escaped after two days. Instead, both remained in catatonic states in Metroplex Maximum Security Prison's hospital wards. Monica had no idea if it was because of Will's rather rough sonic boom treatment, the natural result of their insanity, or something engineered by the academy to keep them from divulging information. There were probably psychics poking at them around the clock, but I wasn't particularly sanguine about them getting anything out of them either. The academy might be cruel, but they weren't careless.

Due to mutual agreement, we had managed to convince the Strongholds that Will's new haircut was due to a dare Zack has issued, rather than having it burned off, thusly preserving the peace for another short while.

Zack actually strutted around for two whole days due to his contributions, before Magenta had embarked upon a case of "therapeutic ego deflation" to get his head back to normal size. Layla and Will had been entirely phlegmatic about the fact they had been partially upstaged by their teammates, which completely suited both of them just fine.

It wasn't like Will lacked for further spectacular rescues either. The Stronghold Three, or "World's Champions," as they called themselves in public, had been out in force, and Will had been at the forefront of world-saving events whether he wanted to or not. I had jokingly told Will he would be saving the world three times over in the week after graduation. I had a suspicion that Mr. Stronghold had taken my joke as a challenge; he saved it four times instead. Well, maybe it was the whole world, but he had deflected a huge missile away from Washington D.C., helped his dad destroy a meteor hurling towards earth, helped change the course of a raging river in the Ukraine, and finally had saving a crashing jetliner from impacting in the middle of O'Hare airport.

The rest of us were just happy that some things were going unequivically good for a change.

* * *

Surviving our first experiences as a superhero team had been easy compared to what happened next. Everyone surviving his or her cover jobs was the next big thing.

Ethan had decided to be a public relations consultant, much to everyone's surprise. We had all expected him to work for the Bureau directly.

"I was going to, but I decided not to. I want to do _something_ that I don't have to lie to Chloe about," he had explained firmly. "She's moving to Maxville; there's a good law school in the next city, and I want to be able to tell her the truth about where I work!"

Besides, Ethan's high tolerance for bullshit and talent at "buttkissery" made him a wiz at PR. Zack frequently, but good-naturedly, joked about him being an evil genius.

Layla was working for the Maxville Parks and Recreation department as the Recycling Coordinator, a job for which she needed virtually no training whatsoever. Will joined his parents in their real estate business… for one month. By then he realized he was utterly horrible at sales, and quickly joined Layla at her job, working as one of her assistants. I found it quietly hilarious that our team leader had the quietest job of all of us.

Zack and Magenta ended up working at a dance club called Glitterdust downtown. Zack's dancing skills aside, he was a great DJ with fantastic taste in music. Magenta, on the other hand, was actually working as a bouncer. Most people didn't expect someone of her size to be able to take down adult men double her weight, and the loud music and colored lights made pinning down her identity virtually impossible. Not to mention it gave us a killer place to hang out.

Maxville suffered no more academy attacks for the rest of the summer, something that had Monica depressingly on edge for most of the time. She had gotten a lot more jumpy since Skybolt had been captured, and was leaning on me a lot for support. I didn't mind at all; it really felt good to know I was making a difference just be being there for her. She couldn't help me as much as she wanted to, considering how often I was working with my friends now, and was just concentrating on being the best damn EMT she could. Like me, she was trying to sublimate her feelings in work.

Other heroes, some of them our classmates, had to deal with the academy attacks we weren't getting, and the fighting was brutal. More than one superhero had to take short leaves of absence to heal up, and sometimes whole city blocks were destroyed in the fighting. It felt sometimes like they were taunting us, daring the Champions of Justice to leave Maxville to help out others.

We were the strongest team by far from our class, and what supervillains did dare attack our city were smacked down pretty hard. We weren't perfect; we oftentimes broke more things than we had to, I once started a fairly good-sized fire more or less by accident, and we nearly cracked the dam once when Will body-slammed a giant gorilla into it in an excess of enthusiasm.

The intermitable waiting for the other shoe to drop wore at us, though we tried to keep as sharp as we could. Training could only distract us for so long, and sometimes I knew we were distracting ourselves with more mundane things to keep from cracking. Something was going to give though. Something always had to give…


	40. Shoe-Dropping Promises

Between everything else that was going on, somehow the rest of the gang was attempting to have something resembling a normal life. The Strongholds were actually helping their son buy his own house, Zack and Magenta wrangled all of us into helping them move into their new apartment, and Ethan quietly got himself a condo downtown.

I had gotten myself moved to second shift so there was a fighting chance I'd be halfway awake during most of our emergencies, so I was actually seeing my friends during daylight hours again (and helping with all the subsequent moving). Because of that, I actually noticed something was up when Ethan wanted to have a house-warming party at his place- and Layla said she would cook. I smelled a conspiracy.

Or, as Ethan had said, "We're going to have a nice night out for once, before everyone gets too busy... for stuff."

I found that highly suspicious. But I went anyway.

"Guys, I have an announcement to make," Ethan said abruptly as we were getting ready to eat. Layla had promised us a gourmet vegetarian dinner, and it smelled good enough that even I, a dedicated carnivore, was eager to dig in. We all waited a little impatiently as he stood up and dug something out of his pocket.

"And not only an announcement, but also a request," he said, dropping a small box on the table. The rest of us stared at it, Layla smugly because she obviously already knew, but Magenta was the first to grasp the implications.

"You're going to ask Chloe to marry you?" Magenta exclaimed incredulously. Ethan nodded, ducking his head and blushing. The long-distance romance between those two had been blossoming ever since Chloe moved to Maxville, but since Ethan had to be so careful about his secret identity, we hadn't gotten to see his girlfriend very much. Because she was so smart, and such a good Champion Debater, we danced on eggs around her to avoid even _veiled_ references to our real jobs. She was frighteningly quick to put together clues.

"Yeah…" he said, lifting his head and beaming at us. "But I need you guys' permission to reveal our secret identities to her. All of ours. Because I'm going to _have_ to tell her mine, and she'll figure out the rest of it eventually."

Well, there were plenty of cases where superheroes had married citizens and then never revealed their secret identities, but there were also plenty of cases where those ended in tragedy as well. And with a girl as smart as Chloe, we'd be much better off just telling her in the first place. We all started nodding slowly.

"Sure Ethan, yeah. That's fine. I mean, she's practically one of us anyway. She knows more about superheroes than anyone except you," Will pointed out.

"Depends on who wins that day," Ethan said mysteriously. "Um… Layla I hope you won't mind if we delay dinner for a bit."

"You're going to propose _now?_ " she exclaimed.

"I… I wanted to let her know what she's getting herself into before she says anything," he explained a little uncertainly.

"Totally understandable. But I think she'll just think it's cool," Will opined, smiling broadly.

"So, lemme see!" Magenta demanded, pointing at the box. Ethan obediently forked it over, and Magenta and Layla opened it to exclaim over the ring. It was a fire opal bracketed by two small diamonds, set in a platinum band. Zack looked at it, wide-eyed, and then abruptly dragged Ethan off into a corner, presumably to talk about how much that cost him. Magenta wasn't going to settle for anything less, not after having seen that. I think Ethan must have been hitting the freelance Champion Debate tables to get the extra cash to buy _that._

In less than ten minutes, Chloe finally showed up from work, and we were all half-marveling and half-goggling at Ethan's careful planning. Ethan practically pounced on her at the door and dragged her into the living room. We all had ringside seats to this little drama; as he positioned her in front of us, then dramatically fell to one knee. Chloe's eyes went wide as he knelt; she obviously hadn't been expecting this.

Zack was stifling snickers, but Will was actually starting to look nervous. Clearly Will had gotten the clue first. I idly placed bets with myself as to when Will would start panicking and looking for a way to top _this_ proposal. Hopefully it wouldn't involve something at a football stadium.

"Chloe… I love you very much. I think I have from the first time we met in Yellowstone. And it would mean the world to me if you would do me the honor of becoming my wife." Chloe's jaw dropped and she looked about ready to say something. Ethan quickly bounded to his feet and stretched up to place a finger over her mouth.

"But before you say or decide anything, I have to let you know something about me, so you know exactly what you're getting yourself into." And with that he took a deep breath, and melted.

" _Ethan?"_ she cried, dropping to her knees beside his puddle-form. She glanced back up at us all, took in the shit-eating grins we all had plastered on our faces, and started to get suspicious. Ethan resolidified and stood in front of her, looking a little scared. You could practically _see_ the wheels turning in Chloe's head as a few hundred odd clues suddenly fit together.

"Viscosity!" she exclaimed, pointing at him, and he nodded, grinning. She turned to slowly look at the rest of us. Viscosity worked in a group; she would know that, so now she just had to figure out who was who out of costume. Will shrugged and flew up a bit from his seat.

"Guardian," she said, and he smiled sheepishly, grounding himself. Layla was next in line, and she extended the ivy-bracelet she wore on her arm to arc across the room.

"Rose Queen." Magenta was next, rolled her eyes, and shifted.

"Violet Cavey!" she said with a smile. Zack was after her, and glowed a bit. It was hard to see in the light, and Ethan turned off the overheads so Zack's yellow-green glow was more visible.

"Brilliance!" I was last, and powered up one hand, my flames illuminating my face in the dark.

"Phoenix," she said to me, and I nodded as Ethan flipped the lights back on. "You're the Champions! And you… couldn't tell me, right?" The last was to Ethan, and he shook his head slowly.

"It's dangerous, and I wanted you to know before you said anything-."

"Don't be silly, I could hardly love you any _less_ now that I know you're a superhero! Where's the ring?" she demanded, her eyes a little wet, smiling brilliantly. Ethan tried to recover his equilibrium, and pulled out the ring. Dropping to one knee again, he lifted up the open box.

"Chloe, will you marry me?" he asked.

"Yes," she said simply, and then lifted him off of his feet for a passionate kiss.

The rest of us whooped and hollered. Maybe it was a little childish, but it had taken Ethan a lot of courage to get together with Chloe in the first place, and they were really well suited for each other. And maybe now the other two couples in our group would stop stalling. Finally.

Eventually Chloe put Ethan down, and got a very mischievous expression on her face.

"I almost hate to tell you this, but… I've known for months," she told him. Ethan's face fell, and the rest of us nearly died laughing. "And honey, that Spandex suit doesn't hide much."

Ethan turned as red as a tomato, and Zack nearly stopped breathing he was laughing so hard. Layla attempted to save Zack's life and Ethan's dignity by announcing dinner, even as Will got a faint deer-in-the-headlights look. Luckily he managed to restrain himself until Layla went to go get rolls before shooting me a panic-filled glance.

"Yeah, this was a big hint," I said quickly as he started to lean over. He swallowed quickly and took a deep breath. Citizens usually waited a lot longer to get married, but it wasn't unusual for heroes to get hitched right out of high school. We were in a high-risk profession, and if you waited too long… well, there might not be a second generation of superheroes.

So Ethan's proposal didn't really shock me at all. Seeing him together with Chloe was actually kind of cool. He had been a lot more low-key than Will or Zack, but he had been really mature about the whole thing. I honestly expected Zack's proposal (once he got around to it) to go something like this.

"Hey Magenta, I got this awesome plastic ring out of this machine. Will ya marry me?"

"Sure. But I'm not wearing any stupid dress."

"I'll get Will to fly us to Vegas or something."

"Cool."

We'd probably find out after some weekend, "And oh yeah, we got married on Saturday." Layla and Will though… I shuddered internally. Layla struck me as the traditional type, at least when it came to something like that. And elaborate superhero weddings were such a target for supervillain attacks; I wouldn't even want to think about it.

* * *

Shortly after Ethan's engagement, the other shoe dropped. Academy teams began popping up all over the world, hell-bent on maximum destruction. We watched in fascinated horror as groups of academy-trained supervillains clashed in vicious battles with heroes across the world. Maxville wasn't immune either, but we weren't getting hammered as hard. At least not by academy villains. All the other villains seemed to think of this as some kind of free-for-all, and joined in.

And it wasn't just the overt ones either. Layla and Will uncovered and defeated a guy who was going to raise radioactive sludge monsters from the landfill, catching him at their cover job and doing a citizen's arrest before he could get very far. Magenta and Zack had discovered a supervillain plot to spike the water of Maxville with nanobots that would have turned the population into mindless slaves. The villain in question tried to use Glitterdust as a test-run, and Zack had objected strenuously once he had caught the guy sneaking into the concession stand. Magenta literally sniffed him out while Zack gleefully shorted out the nanobot-tainted tanks of pop syrup.

Some of them were more personal. I got a call from Tobias one afternoon letting him know there had been an attempt on the Battle estate. Everyone had been gone except for Thomas and the staff, and Tobias had been certain Thomas was the object of the attack.

"They tried to use technopaths to get past the house security," he had said smugly. Smugly because the Battle estate dated back to the Dark Ages, and half of its defenses were purely physical. Apparently there had been a mildly amusing interlude where they plucked the invaders out of the moat. That had been the only amusing thing about it though. They hadn't gotten through, but they had still been willing to go after a twelve year-old child. The good part was only one of them had escaped; two more languished in jail right now.

The little victories like that helped keep our spirits up, because our friends and fellow superheroes were getting hammered. The Bureau kept a running tally of who was hurt, a lot like how professional sports had an injured reserve list. But there was a lot more at stake here than just the loss of a game. Citizens could die, buildings could crumble, things could be stolen, and power plants explode because Scarlet Tiger had a broken leg, or Starlight needed to be thawed and recover from hypothermia.

No one had died yet, that we knew of at least. It wasn't through lack of trying, but so far the heroes had been careful. Nobody had to be told the consequences to trying to beard the dragon in his lair to try to stop this for good. Attempting to stop this madness at its source would only result in a lot of dead bodies. Unfortunately, we were the only ones so far to capture any known member of the academy, and Skybolt's continued catatonia didn't exactly give the Bureau or us anything to work with. Our insiders had gone mostly quiet, for reasons they didn't want to tell the Bureau (or they didn't want to tell us), so we just had to deal with the blows as they came.

* * *

_One month later, Sixth and Main, ambulance 657_

Monica had moved with me to the afternoon shift, disregarding the increased danger as she had Coop's knowing smirks and some of the other girls' poisonous glances. It was her decision to make, not mine, and I hadn't argued against it. I didn't want to lose the only real place we had any privacy to talk.

My own house was out; everyone else was still getting their sanctums built, so we were still meeting in mine. Most public places were too risky. We could have gone to Monica's apartment, but that would have been too much of a temptation for both of us. Neither of us was ignorant of where we wanted this to go eventually, but things could have gone too far, too fast if we weren't careful. It was frustrating to have to sneak around so damn much, and more than once I had nearly talked myself into doing something stupid. Nearly. The fact that I was still living in the same fifty-mile radius as my mom helped with my self-control.

"I just got a heads-up in my latest communiqué. The Crew is hitting Maxville First National Bank tomorrow at dusk," she said without preamble as we parked, snapping me abruptly out of my woolgathering.

I stared at her for a second, stunned. Fear clutched me for a second as my mine ran to the first obviously conclusion.

"Did they tell you to-?"

"No," she said instantly, shaking her head. "They actually told me specifically to stand down and observe." She rolled her eyes a little. "If I still actually cared about them, I might be annoyed about not getting any action."

I snorted in half amusement, half relief at that.

"They're going to be outnumbered though," I pointed out, raising an eyebrow. With Monica here and Skybolt still in Metroplex, not to mention attacking us on our home ground, we'd have the clear advantage. Doubly so because we knew they were coming.

"They didn't mention anything about that," she said, shrugging.

"Are they done doing test runs?" I asked sharply. I wasn't angry with her, but I was just damn tired of waiting, probing, and testing. Any other respectable supervillain (and I used that term loosely) would have considered sending Son of Silver to Maxville, or unleashing dinosaur robots a more than good enough attempt, if they had just followed through with it.

"Yes. They're ready now. I'm supposed to be evaluating your performance this week particularly closely," she said, gripping the steering wheel a little tightly. "I think it's going to be really harsh."

"No kidding," I muttered.

"It's all about timing," Monica told me, striving to clarify something. "Look how long it took you to take down the dinosaurs; how long it took the Commander and Jetstream to respond to the call for Son of Silver. They think it's crucial that you don't have any other backup."

I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, as I tried to get an idea on how we would handle this.

"I'll be nearby. I'll do anything I can to help," she added, going a little pale. I leaned over and caught her up in a sideways hug, holding her close. I could tell she was trembling.

This was the first time, as far as I knew, that the Crew was going to be all together in the same city since Homecoming nearly three years ago. And this time she wouldn't be able to easily hide from them if she decided to help us. Cutter would, and had, carved up superheroes, sidekicks, and citizens alike in her short time being active. All of the Crew had a deserved reputation for viciousness, and there would be a very good chance that any or all of the Champions of Justice or the citizens we were protecting could get badly hurt defending ourselves.

"We'll be ok," I told her softly. "We know they're coming. The academy's going to be really disappointed."

Giant robot dinosaurs or mutated gorillas were easier to fight than a variety pack of villains; for one, they were much bigger targets, something all of us could focus all our efforts on at once. But with something like the Crew, with their random array of abilities, made for a much more difficult battle. What I had said was partially bravado… but we had the advantage of experience, foreknowledge, and numbers. That should give us an edge, at least.

She didn't meet my eyes at that; her own were suspiciously wet, and her lips met mine for a slightly frantic kiss, spiced with salt. She was scared to face them, even if not openly, and trying to hold back her fear.

"It'll be ok," I whispered, and I felt her breathe heavily, taking deep calming breaths.

"I'm such a mess right now," she mumbled into my vest. "I'm sorry."

She had been crying a lot more recently. The stepping up of the academy had really woken feelings of intense guilt within her, guilt about what she had done to force some of the supervillains to learn what the academy wanted them to, guilt about every hero that got hurt, resentment that I had to spend more time away from her because of my friends, and then guilt over _that_ too. If I hadn't guilt-tripped myself on so many occasions, I wasn't sure if I would have understood what she was going through.

But I had, and I did. She was being forced to come to terms with what she had done and the consequences of that, on top of divided loyalties and falling in love with someone from the opposite side of the fence. Luckily though, that went for both of us.

I knew some guys could have been annoyed with her for being clingy or weepy, but it wasn't like she didn't have a reason. She never smothered me, she never tried to lean on my shoulder if I was already shaken from something, and would always listen to me when I got frustrated or upset. I was helping her shoulder her sorrow and giving her heart; she was helping me deal with my anger and soothing my temper.

"Don't be. We'll get through this sooner or later," I reminded her, running one hand through her hair, feeling her slowly doing the same to me.

"Sooner," she said quietly. "I think it's going to be sooner. Be careful out there."

"Always am."

* * *

I didn't like lying to my friends, but the fact of the matter was I had gotten depressingly good at it over the past couple of years. The Bureau had even helped me inadvertently. The fact that the director had occasionally spoken to me in private about things had given me the perfect excuse to claim I had been given a heads-up about the Crew's intentions. At that point, everyone had been more worried about making plans than questioning the origin of the warning. Maybe later somebody would wonder about it, but not now.

Maxville First National Bank was in the city plaza, behind which was the alley where I had fought Hammerfist. The plaza was the perfect place for our confrontation, reasonably open, but still with enough in the way of statues, fountains, artwork, and pillars for cover if we needed it. Green enough to give Layla a good arsenal, but not so much that I would have to be overly careful about setting things on fire. The fact that we actually knew the Crew was coming gave us an edge we hadn't had against supervillains since the last time we had fought them. We didn't know exactly when or how they would make their entrance, but since Monica had been told me she had to start observing around dusk, I made an excuse to the others that we had to been there before then.

Since more than one academy team had attacked in broad daylight before this, it wasn't much of a stretch. And that, unfortunately, was the really sad part about it. They had gotten so bold I didn't even get much of an argument out of the gang.

That day Ethan had managed to get himself in to see the manager of Maxville First National Bank on some consulting excuse; Layla and Will were nearby in the plaza doing "inspections" on the recycling containers, Magenta had "dragged" Zack along to "shop" at some of the stores, and I was lurking near a large piece of metal artwork. I had once made a lifestyle out of lurking, and it wasn't too hard to play that role now.

I attempted to be pretending to wait, occasionally checking my phone, checking my watch, and keeping an eye on the crowd. Where Monica had hid herself, I wasn't exactly sure. And I wasn't going to go looking for her either. It was getting into fall, and the fact that people had started to break out coats meant that it would be a little easier for our villains to sneak up into the bank, if they wanted to.

I should have known better than to think that Cutter's Crew was going to "sneak" anywhere.

Storm clouds began to gather as the afternoon went on, kicking up a wind and starting to clear the plaza of sightseers. A storm had actually been forecasted, so I hadn't gotten too paranoid, only mildly annoyed that I might have to fight in the rain. It was when the lightning started that the adrenaline kicked in. Behind me a metal sculpture exploded as a huge stroke of electricity lashed down from the sky, sending people scattering all over the plaza like leaves. I had managed to land prone, but at least facing the right way and at least half my wits intact.

Skybolt was standing on the slagged metal, a crazy, cocky grin on his face. My heart sped up as I scrambled into cover. The citizens of Maxville were well experienced in what to do during a superbattle, and other than a few rubberneckers or super junkies, most fled at top speed, screaming their heads off. Those that could, of course. Plenty were limping away, some were crawling, and some weren't moving.

 _How the hell did Skybolt get out of Metroplex? How did get regain_ consciousness? _Oh fuck, did he stage a jailbreak?_

Even as I quick-changed and got ready to step out of cover to protect the injured citizens, I was looking wildly around for a glimpse of Royal Pain's signature purple and gold. All I saw was a flickering at the edge of my vision, and whipped around to see Cutter and the rest of the Crew finally come to rest next to Skybolt after teleporting in.

Bruin and Bloodtalon were already shifted, and Viper was holding what looked like a long, thin spear, glistening wetly in the flickering lightning. That it was completely poisonous I had no doubt. Cutter stood in the center, shooting Skybolt a "good puppy" look, knives in her hands. She looked briefly around the plaza, a contemptuous glare for all the fallen and fleeing citizens, before wheeling to face the bank.

Viscosity was already standing there, a stun ray in his hands, looking both valiant and terribly vulnerable all alone. Cutter just laughed, Skybolt and Viper joining her, howling like rabid hyenas.

"You know, you really ought to get that checked. It can't be healthy to have not hit puberty this late in life," Magenta's voice rang out over the plaza. They all turned in shock, the cackling cut off, to see Violet Cavey and Brilliance off to their right. Brilliance had light bombs in either hand, and Violet Cavey held her ray gun in a deceptively loose-fingered grip.

"Or what about that sloppy entrance?" Layla's voice called right on her heels. To the Crew's right, Rose Queen and Guardian walked into view, the trees in their planters growing slightly in response to Rose's anger. Guardian hovered slowly, ready to fly at them in an instant.

"I just don't think these guys even have a clue," I said, adding fuel to the fire as I powered up, revealing my location opposite Viscosity in the plaza.

"Surrender!" he called, lifting his chin up.

"Oh, honeybear, I don't think so. _Now!"_ she screamed. There was another bright flash, but I saw it all pretty clearly. Skybolt somehow managed to call down another bolt of lightning right next to him, and then _grabbed it and held on_ like he was a bronco rider from hell as it zapped back up into the sky.

Rose Queen caught the implications instantly, that he meant to start slamming us all from above, and did the quickest use of her powers I had ever seen. Every single tree in the plaza suddenly shot up and began to grow- sideways. The branches shot out and intertwined, forming a ceiling over the plaza, completely blocking any overhead view. Simultaneously, they also grew downward in places, forming protective barriers around each and every fallen or unconscious citizen, and then a few more empty ones besides to give us more cover. It cut up the battlefield considerably, but it also meant Bloodtalon and Cutter would have a hell of a lot harder time targeting any of us.

Cursing from the Crew told us our first move had worked.

It meant I had to be a lot more careful when fighting, but I would take this over unanticipated attacks from multiple angles any day. Ducking behind the first of the new obstacles, I heard Will shouting orders over the com.

"I'm going up to get Skybolt. Phoenix, take care of Rose, that took a lot out of her," he said, and then all I could hear was the booming of thunder. Through the thick foliage above, I could see brilliant flashes of lightning, and knew the two must be chasing each other all over the sky. I had no damn idea of how Skybolt was managing to ride the lightning like he was, and though he must be fast, I knew Will was a lot more maneuverable. And he _damn_ sure wasn't going to get hit again, not after the dinosaur debacle. Skybolt could do the most damage to the greatest number of people, so he was Will's. It was up to the rest of us to contain the Crew.

I ducked from tree to tree, working my way closer to Layla, closing my eyes once as Zack warned us of a light bomb going off, ears and eyes straining for any sign of our enemies. Cutter could be anywhere, but with so much of her line of sight cut off in our newly defined space, she would have to be careful. Bruin would be a heck of a lot louder though, and I listened for his lumbering pawsteps.

Shouts and curses heard both normally and over the com told me Zack and Magenta were fighting Viper and Cutter. Brilliance's glowing, sans the light bomb, illuminated the whole covered plaza, and was giving me the light I needed to see where I was going. Glancing over at them as I ran, I could see Magenta back to back with Zack; both of them with stun rays out, carefully targeting their foes.

I could see what was going on, because of the photosensitive lenses in my helmet, but Cutter and Viper were much worse off. She couldn't see well enough to target, and both of my friends were moving around so much and so erratically it was spoiling her patented blind throwing shots. Viper kept trying to get closer in, but Zack and Magenta weren't going to let his poisonous hands anywhere within the same zip code as their own skin. They kept retreating from Viper and dodging from Cutter, doing a peculiar long-distance waltz all over the plaza. Amazingly, both of the Crew were dodging or deflecting the return stun rays with remarkable accuracy, Cutter with her metallic bracers, and Viper with his spear. My opinion of their skill took a shot upward, and I kept myself powered up, braced for more trouble.

Within a few moments I had finally worked my way to Layla, Ethan meeting me at almost the same instant. She was swaying on her feet, holding herself up with vines, but doggedly determined to not give in to exhaustion. I had never seen her grow so much in such a short period of time, and we both gave her smiles as we moved to protect her.

"Great job!" Ethan said, and Layla smiled weakly behind her mask; we could see it in her eyes.

We didn't get there a second too soon. No sooner had we gotten ready to defend Rose Queen when Bruin came sprinting towards us with the speed and force of a train, having caught sight of my fire slipping through the trees. Right over his back, flying low, was Bloodtalon. I threw my fire at her without hesitation, hitting hard and drawing an avian scream of rage as she retreated. With any luck that would take her out of the fight for a little bit. I didn't dare let her turn any of us against each other, and despite Bruin's strength, I considered _her_ the dangerous one. While I was roasting chicken, Bruin had gotten shockingly close, and I found myself abruptly shoved to one side.

Layla had been shoved to the other, and I yelled as I realized Ethan was now directly in the path of the charging Bruin. Heart in my throat, I tried to shove myself up so I could stop him, and nearly screamed as Bruin's mouth gaped open, roaring loud enough to shake my bones, huge teeth ready to tear into Ethan-.

Who melted at the same instant, plastering himself across Bruin's eyes, nose, and gaping jaws. The roaring stopped as Bruin drew himself up so short he somersaulted right past us, slamming into a planter. Frantically he got up again, huge claws tearing at Ethan, trying to pry him off his face. But the huge, knife-like claws only slid through Ethan's melted body, and I realized, as blood began to hit the pavement from behind the orange blob, the only damage Bruin was doing was to his own face.

Bruin's gyrations took on a frantic quality, still in complete silence, and I knew that in addition to being blind, Ethan was cutting off Bruin's air. Bruin had put at least a half-dozen superheroes in the hospital, some with scars they would carry all their life. One would probably have to wear a full-face mask from now on, if he didn't want to scare the people he rescued, he had been mauled so badly. However apologetic or harmless he had seemed the time we had met him off the clock, there was no denying the man was as dangerous as any other supervillain.

I leapt to stand over Layla, powering back up and flinging more fire at Bruin. Ethan would only ride the guy to unconsciousness and not to anything further, at least I hoped. He had been particularly appalled at what the members of the Crew had done to the other heroes, and he was done holding back. Due to his extensive experience at Champion Debate, Ethan "knew" a lot more heroes than we did, and I knew it really bothered him on a personal level to know what had been done to him. And I knew this was also a personal quest to prove he wouldn't be a coward facing the Crew a second time.

My fire would hurt, but it wasn't my intention to bring him down myself. Dancing around blindly to avoid the pain of the burns would exhaust Bruin faster. This was cruel, but with Bruin half-immune to stun rays and Layla about to pass out, we didn't have a choice. It took a lot longer than I would have wanted, but Bruin finally fainted, shifting back to human at the last second, as Ethan quickly pulled himself off and resolidified. In human form, Bruin wore a rather sad and baggy brown super-suit with an indifferent half-mask, now ripped to shreds. Huge bloody furrows from his own claws were raked from forehead to chin on one side of his face, and the blood leaked sullenly onto the pavement.

His chest was still moving and his color improved the second Ethan left him, so while he looked horrible, he wasn't in any real danger of dying yet. Elaborate cursing from the coms told us Magenta and Zack were still locked in battle with Cutter and Viper, while Ethan turned a little green, realizing exactly what he'd done.

It was then I heard an angry screech above us. I hadn't realized my flailing about with fire had burned a hole in our green "roof" until a very badly scorched eagle, eyes red with fury and stinking of soot, arrowed through, straight towards me. She wasn't as fast as Guardian or Skybolt, but she was too fast for me to dodge, and I staggered, yelling loudly, as she raked her talons along my face. I felt her strike deeply, sickeningly scraping along my jaw before she flew up again. My last thought that went through my head was I hoped to hell Will remembered what he had promised.

Then everything turned into fire.

The rage struck instantly, boiling along my blood, and fire erupted from head to toe, blinding agony shooting through my head. I had to use it, to burn, to char, to see something, anything, reduced to a smoking skeleton. Only destruction would ease the fiery rage, only death would stop the pain. I wanted to smell burning flesh and scorched stone, I wanted to hear screams.

I hurled huge fireballs at the retreating Bloodtalon, everything focused on how she would look once she was ashes. Cackling madly, she escaped my range, and I roared, turning to look for a target. Any target.

I lashed out insensibly, turning towards any direction where the screams were loudest, barely even conscious of what I was seeing, only letting the fire flow in an endless stream of destructive rage. Something pounded into my side, pinning my hands, and I cursed it in every language I knew, the fire flaring from my entire skin, drawing gasps of pain from whoever dared to touch me.

I roared, trying to burn this thing with just my anger alone, wanting to hear it scream, to see it die, the agony spreading like wildfire…

I was screaming and became aware vaguely aware that I was moving, but not under my own power.

"Fucking let me go! Bastard, you'll fucking burn for this!" I snarled, the fire pulsing and throbbing with the thunder of my heart.

Someone was talking at me, and I felt it start to get cold. My flames began to diminish, and now a new kind of pain, like wire wrapped around my skull, slowly eclipsed the burning. My flames flickered and died, and I felt myself gasping for air. Words were being spoken to me, and I slowly began to make sense of them.

"-nix, Phoenix! Wake up, come on Phoenix! Warren!"

 _Voice. My name. Guardian's voice. Will's voice._ The rage began to subside as the red film over my vision began to clear. Guardian was right in front of me. He had managed to tackle me, pinning my arms at my sides, and must have flown up high. High enough for the air to thin and all the warmth to subside, because when I tentatively looked over to the side, there was nothing recognizable of Maxville at all. We were above the clouds. My head began to hurt worse and worse, anger still trying to make me burn even when there was no air to breathe.

"Air," I said frantically, struggling futilely in his grasp.

"Are you ok now?" he asked sternly, at odds with the terrible expression of guilt on his face.

"Air!" I insisted, gulping like a fish out of water.

"Warren, you told me if this ever happened, I had to take you out. Tell me you're ok or…" Will trailed off, and I saw tears actually leak out of his eyes, freezing immediately on his cheeks. "I'll drop you."

He would too, he had promised to keep his friends safe… Even an indestructible superhero couldn't survive a fall from this height. Will looked completely stricken, his voice shook with sorrow and pain, facing one of the worst things he could have imagined so far. With a wrench of effort combined of the blinding agony from the lack of air, Will's desperate plea, and the knowledge that having to kill me would nearly destroy him, the chains of rage snapped.

"I'm ok," I said weakly, and stopped struggling, my vision blackening.

"Hang on, this is going to hurt," Will warned, and without further warning began to accelerate earthwards.

_My God, he left the others to help me. Are they all right?_

My ears popped and popped again painfully as we descended faster than anything had the right to go, and anyone other than him or me would have ruptured their eardrums from falling so fast. I didn't even protest though, only took grateful gulps of the ever-thickening air.

Breaking through the first layer of clouds, I could still see the lightning storm boiling over what had to be Maxville, and an intense feeling of guilt slammed into my stomach. He had left Skybolt to keep me from setting my friends, the Crew, the injured citizens, and possibly all of Maxville afire, and now the Crew outnumbered the Champions.

As we got closer, we must have suddenly come back into the range of the coms, because they erupted in a cacophony.

"-ing bastards!" Magenta's voice rang out, followed by the peculiar warbling retort of a stun ray. Further echoes, combined with low-pitched curses from Zack told us they were both still in the middle of a firefight.

"Rose! Rose, stay with me, please!"

Will turned white as Ethan's voice broke in, nearly sobbing. As we passed through the boiling layer of clouds, I could feel a tingling along my spine as Skybolt tried to gun for us, cackling hysterically. Thought I thought it was impossible, Will accelerated even more, shattering the sound barrier and leaving behind a sonic boom that stunned Skybolt momentarily. It also shattered my eardrums, nearly broke my neck, and almost plowed us both straight into the ground.

Will slowed abruptly as the scene below us came clear, and I heard him choke back something that sounded like a sob.

"Take care of her," Will pleaded, and I jerked my eyes down. I gaped when I finally made sense of what I was seeing; the trees Layla had grown for our protection had become dry and brittle, and only one thing could have caused that. Layla was lying on the ground in a spreading pool of scarlet, enough of Cutter's knives stuck in her that she looked like a voodoo doll. I couldn't believe she was still alive.

Cutter must have used Bloodtalon's attack and my subsequent departure from the battlefield to get over to Layla in the confusion, trying to kill the one person who was cramping her style. Ethan must have managed to drive Cutter away, or she had left of her own accord, but she had been able to get Bruin out before she quit the field. Magenta and Zack's last shots were just going off in their last general direction, and the thunder above had ceased as Skybolt quit the scene.

"They fucking ran!" Magenta spat, turning and seeing Layla for the first time. She froze in shock, Zack running into her, as Will and I finally landed next to her. The _wrongness_ slammed into me with the force of a freight train, and I kneeled next to her, headless of the blood. Gaping bloody furrows had scored right through her armor, showing Bruin had managed to mark her too. Before or after Cutter's attack, it didn't really matter.

I was still massively light-headed and cold from my trip to the upper atmosphere, frightened to death of what had just happened to me, furious at the Crew, and terrifying of seeing Layla die. Some small part of me coldly realized exactly what the Crew had calculated for. Someone's horrible death, and the subsequent swearing of revenge on her murderers, was exactly what they wanted.

_Not now. Not now and not ever._

For the second time I felt the fire flow all through me, this time not in rage, but in need. Layla's fire was nearly black, scored and fragmented from her wounds, but I was patient, finding each little piece of fire and stubbornly nursing it back to health. I heard voices in the background, but kept shoving them away, even as I felt the fire draining out of me. Someone gasped, and finally there was a faint cry of pain. Someone jerked me back, and I came out of my trance with a start. Blackness pulled at my vision, and I felt badly chilled, but I wasn't going to fall over on my nose quite yet.

"Phoenix, it's ok, she's ok," I heard Will say, and opened my eyes cautiously. Layla was bright red, flushed with heat, blinking and sweating, but clearly alive. Magenta had hastily given her the loan of her jacket to cover the rents in her costume, and a half-dozen bloodstained knives were laid out next to her in a line. Will shoved me aside to catch Layla up in his arms, his shoulders shaking hard, babbling to her and me simultaneously.

"Thank you, thank you, I thought I lost you," he was saying, his voice muffled into her shoulder.

"I'm ok, I'm find Guardian, I'm just a little warm," she said weakly, blinking in confusion. I just sat there numbly, wincing as cold rain began to fall, and began to shiver. All three of us were still sitting in a pool of Layla's blood, but I really couldn't muster up the energy to care.

"Guys, Channel Six caught all of that," Zack muttered to us. Now that the immediate danger was over, police, paramedics, firefighters, and reporters (not necessarily in that order) descended upon the scene in droves, helping and questioning the injured citizens at the same time. I vaguely looked around for Monica, and then realized she would hardly come out under the cameras' eyes.

"What… happened?" I managed finally, when I had regained enough coherence to form a sentence.

"Later," Magenta said sharply. "You both look like hell. Guardian, get them to the hospital, we'll finish up here."

"Are they really gone?" Ethan interjected quickly, rapidly scanning the skies and the plaza with a healthy dose of paranoid.

"Dude, when do they _ever_ stick around?" Zack pointed out.

"Point," Ethan conceded, and waved for Will to get going.

I was thinking about protesting, but before I could remember how or why, I was already in the air and halfway to the Bureau hospital wing. Within ten minutes I was under a hot blanket, an oxygen mask over my face, inhaling the rich air like I was drowning. Will and Layla were getting their burns cleaned and bandaged right next to me, and I was trying not to wince every time they did. Will's face was burned again from where I had gone nova, though apparently taking the trip up so high had helped deflect the worst of the fire. He actually looked much less worse than the time with the dinosaur robots. All of Layla's knife and claw wounds were gone, but I had left my right handprint burned into her chest. If I was lucky maybe Will wouldn't kill me for that.

I hadn't said anything while they were tended to, keeping the mask over my face even though I really didn't need to. It gave me a perfect excuse not to talk. In truth I was feeling almost normal physically, but was still very shaken mentally. I had been careless, and if Will had been one second slower, I might have killed someone. That fact was just sinking in now. I could have easily died up there if Will had chosen so, and the thought of falling through all of that icy space…

I hadn't known he was capable of that. Then again, Layla had been closest when Bloodtalon had hit me. I should have considered myself lucky that he hadn't knocked my head off of my shoulders to stop me. As it was, he had made a choice to try to save his best friend and his girlfriend had nearly died because of it. If I hadn't been able to heal, I would have considered anything he had done to me as just punishment.

It must have been an hour or so before the rest of the gang joined us, damp from the rain but looking much better than the rest of us.

"How'd it go?" Layla asked, hanging Magenta back her jacket. She'd had to ask the nurses for some other clothes to go home in; her costume was a total loss.

"All right," Ethan said with a small shrug. "I tried to keep from naming anything specifically, and luckily the cameras were pretty far away when… You know. I don't think they caught too much. Anyways, most of the people that were close enough to see what really happened were also kinda busy trying to keep themselves from being noticed by the Crew. We went and talked to everyone and asked them to keep quiet."

Magenta smirked when Ethan mentioned that, and we all got a faint smile on our faces. It was a tried and true fact that when a superhero asked a citizen for their help in keeping something a secret, it almost always worked. People liked getting responsibilities from superheroes, and Ethan was very clever for having both remembered it and talking to each person.

"Guys, did you find out what happened with Skybolt?" Will asked more urgently. Ethan looked uncomfortable, like someone had asked him a Champion Debate question he wasn't prepared to answer, but nodded.

"Both him and Saurian Lord are gone. No one is sure how yet; the security cameras fuzzed out in their rooms during their breakout. Everything shows the power-suppresser field was working though, so they're not sure how they did it. They literally managed to _break_ out. They actually broke through walls, but no one saw them leave," he said, looking thoroughly bewildered.

"How the hell did that happen? Is anyone else missing?" Magenta asked. Ethan shook his head emphatically.

"Royal Pain is still in prison. It looks like they didn't even try to get anyone else out. They just… woke up with super-strength, bashed through walls, and waltzed out!" he said with exasperation. "The Bureau's on the look-out, but everyone is pretty scared."

"No joke," Zack muttered. Everyone looked at each other for a second, wide-eyed, but it was Layla that broke the silence.

"This isn't the first time they've pulled these escaping tricks before, just the best one so far. They'll be back," she pointed out. Reluctantly we all agreed.

"Did anyone see Painbreaker?" Layla asked. "She wasn't there, and that was kind of strange."

"No man, and I was looking," Zack answered quickly and quietly. Magenta put her arm around his waist loosely, looking up at him encouragingly. Everyone else just shrugged.

"Maybe she's hurt and can't fight, or her mentor isn't done with her yet," Ethan opined. We batted that back and forth for a minute, but mostly we were a little too tired to get into a detailed debate.

"What… happened out there today? After Bloodtalon…" I asked carefully, changing the subject to something more personal as we wound down. Ethan looked at me, then over at Will and Layla, and took a deep breath.

"After Bloodtalon hit you and Will took you away, Cutter teleported over to try to get to Layla. So I was standing over her, and pulled out my stun ray."

"And then we figured out she had just left instead of hiding again," Magenta added. "So we started to tag-team Viper as fast as we could, and he just ran when he realized he had no backup."

"Then Cutter just stopped about ten feet from me and started smiling. I fired at her, but then Bruin got up again, shifted, and charged me. I threw myself under his feet and melted so he would slip, then Cutter starting throwing knives at Layla," he said quietly. He was staring at the floor when he said that, hands clasped behind his back, his entire stance rigid. "Bruin landed on Layla, I got myself back together, and then by then Cutter and him were both gone."

"By the time we even realized what was going on, you guys were already back," Zack finished.

"Ok, I'm going to say something. We're not going to play the damn blame game for this. Seriously, or I'm going to kick everyone's ass individually and alphabetically on a daily basis from now on to knock sense into your heads. Because if I want to hang around with a bunch of emo, depressed, self-absorbed jackasses, I'd go back to Sky High. That's not us guys, that's never been us," Magenta broke in.

As we were trying to take that all in, a soft knock sounded on the door, and three people entered the room. Two I recognized vaguely as nurses; I had seen them now and then when I had stopped in for fan mail, talking with some of the other Bureau workers. One was a thin, pale woman with aggressively short dark brown hair, and the other was a man that looked like her brother, with gray-shot dark hair longer than my own. The third I didn't recognize, and she was particularly weird; if I'd ever seen her before, I definitely would have remembered it. If a crane had gotten stuck halfway to turning into a human, that would have described her pretty well. She had a long curved beak in place of her mouth and nose, and a crest of white feathers instead of hair. Thin white feathers covered her skin, though the rest of her looked human enough, if elongated and bony.

She only gave Will and Layla the most perfunctory of nods before turning to me, and ignored the rest of the group entirely, which was unusual. Will being who he was, he got mobbed every time he stepped into the Bureau. The fact that he was easygoing and didn't keep his fans at arm's length like I did meant every time he was in costume and not busy saving the world, he was surrounded by people. Even now, the occasional intern, nurse, office worker, doctor, or recuperating superhero had been poking their heads in almost constantly just to say hello. The bird-woman closed the door behind her and drew the shades, blocking out the curiosity seekers.

"Dr. Egret, can we help you?" Ethan asked politely.

 _Ah,_ I thought dumbly, _that's Egret. Duh._ Of course, the stethoscope, caduceus on her coat, and the nametag should have tipped me off. I must have been more tired than I thought. I recalled her name being paged a few times when I had been I the Bureau. She was, obviously, one of the doctors in the medical wing, with some minor healing power of her own.

"Phoenix," she said shortly, ignoring everyone else. "I saw the news. The director refused to talk to me, so I came to see you directly. It is true?"

Even tired as I was, I saw where this was going, and it wasn't going to be pretty. I tried to figure out a way to stall when she went over and picked up Layla's ripped, bloodstained costume off the floor. Then she looked at the relatively small bandage Layla had on now and gave a triumphant trill, echoing strangely within her beak.

"I suppose that's a yes!" she said gleefully. "Phoenix, I can't imagine why you've kept this a secret. This is wonderful!"

The rest of my friends looked uncomfortable, and Will and Layla looked downright torn. They had a good idea of what might happen, but today's fight had left us with a lot of issues. I don't think anyone was sure if they wanted to hit me or thank me (or both), and I definitely didn't want them to feel obligated to defend me.

"I got this guys," I said, finally putting the oxygen mask away. The two nurses gave Will and Layla a quick once-over, and then waved them from the room with everyone else, filing out in awkward silence. They sat in the chairs near the door and watched us both carefully.

"Yeah, it's great," I agreed flatly, continuing our conversation. Egret's face fell a little at my tone.

"I apologize for barging in on you like this. It's just I'm not certain you realize what this means for us."

"Us?" I asked.

"Superheroes. The Bureau."

I knew what she wanted, and I couldn't refuse without looking like a selfish bastard. I started feeling sick to my stomach, and suddenly very much wished I hadn't sent my friends away. I wished my mom was here, because she could have made everything sound reasonable and sent everyone home happy. I even wished Monica could have been here, because she could have probably made Egret feel guilty about even being in the same room as me.

I took a deep breath. I was an adult, and I didn't have to have my friends, my mom, or my girlfriend holding my hand. Even if I really, _really_ wanted to.

"Yeah, I know. The academy knows too, that's why we kept it a secret."

"Well, I could see that. But don't you want to help your fellow superheroes? There are so many of them that would give a lot to be out there fighting evil again."

I had promised myself, if this situation ever came up, that I wouldn't get too defensive, but I was so tired I didn't have my mental filters on all the way. I started talking too fast, almost babbling excuses, saying it was risky, I had to have help to keep from going too far, it was draining and difficult, that I might not have enough strength left to fight crime-.

Egret verbally pounced on that last bit.

"But what if you didn't?"

"Didn't what?'

"Didn't have to fight?"

I blinked at her in non-comprehension.

"If we found someone else to take your place with the Champions. I know you've been a really excellent fighter Phoenix. But think how much _more_ you could do as a healer! Think how many more people you could save, through each person that you get back out there to fight. You wouldn't have to be angry all the time, and the risk would be so much less to you. I know you've never really thought about it before, but just think how much more you could accomplish," she said passionately.

I swallowed hard, staring at her in half-defiance, half-fear. It had just crossed my mind that if I were to just be a healer, I would never have to worry about a day like today happening again. That I would never have to deliberately hurt someone with my fire again.

On the other hand, that wasn't what I was. I had been a fighter, since day one-. _And look where that got you. You were an angry, brooding loner for most of your life. If you knew from the start that you didn't have to power up in anger, what would have happened to you? How would you have turned out?_

I felt a vague sense of something smothering me as Egret's eager expression and impassioned logic hammered at me, but I couldn't find the words to protest. The air suddenly felt too thin to breathe again.

"Egret, give the man time to think," the short-haired woman broke in. Her words broke Egret's momentary spell, and anger came back to the forefront of my mind. To do what Egret suggested, I'd have to leave my friends behind, to be alone again in a profession and job that I didn't particularly want. I'd be changing everything that I was, before I was entirely certain of that myself. I looked over at the woman sharply. Egret looked pissed, probably because the nurse had broken the spell of words she had been weaving. I was confused; weren't they on the same side?

"Aren't you supposed to convince me too?" I asked. She shook her head.

"We're here as impartial witnesses."

"Hardly impartial, _I'd_ say-," Egret started, but clacked her beak shut as the longhaired man raised his hand for silence.

"And as your advocates, Phoenix. Think of us as union representatives," he commented mildly.

I must have looked extra confused, because he elaborated, speaking to both Egret and I.

"There is nothing the Bureau can give us, not our pay, not aid, not our cover identities, or anything that makes up for the total dedication we give to our jobs. How many other people are on call twenty-four hours a day, every day, with no hope of vacation or rest? And though we have only recently rectified the mistake with assigning Sidekicks, as a whole, the Bureau has _never_ dictated how a superhero must use his powers. That has always been the decision of the individual. And no many how much you might want to press, Egret, the choice belongs to Phoenix," he said calmly.

"Please," she said finally, her voice more coaxing. "The academy has made it so much harder for the few of us in the medical department. There are so many more casualties. We could really use your help."

I drew a slightly shaky breath, and finally shook my head. Egret jerked as if she had been stung.

"But you're not doing _enough!"_ she cried, almost a wail.

Oh, that _hurt._ I suddenly had an insight as to how this must be for her, to be one of so few to stem a rising tide of injury and pain. There were very few super-doctors in comparison to the number of active heroes. She, and the rest of her staff, must have been working themselves to the bone to keep everyone going. I must have seemed like the answer to her prayers. I felt horrible, but the sudden thought of being trapped in here with dozens of injured heroes brought back that terrible smothering feeling again. I hadn't forgotten my mom's lecture about Margaret Peace. But it still hurt.

"Egret!" the man said sharply, rising from his chair. "That was too far. Leave Phoenix alone, he's made his choice. If he wants to give us a try someday, that'll be up to him."

Egret lifted her chin, her beady bird's eyes looking from him to me and back again, and finally sailed out of the room. I grabbed my helmet from the floor, taking a few more deep breaths to get myself calm. She had been desperate, willing to try to guilt-trip me into what she wanted, and I guess that excused a lot of what she said. But right now I just wanted to go home and sleep before anything else happened.

I waited a few moments for Egret to get well clear, and then moved to leave myself, just desperate to get out. As I passed the doorway, the woman put her hand on mine for a second, halting me.

"Phoenix, don't you _ever_ thing you're not doing enough. You're doing more than you'll ever know," she said firmly, catching my gaze. She had the kindest brown eyes I had ever seen, and I felt some of my anxiety easing as I finally left.

As the door shut behind me, I realized I didn't even know their names.

My friends were all standing around in the hallway, talking softly, and I walked up to them with a little trepidation.

"Ok dudes, we're having a party," Zack announced as I appeared, not even asking what Egret had wanted from me. Everyone looked at him wearily. After everything that had happened today, doing anything like that almost sounded nauseating.

"After you get some sleep," he clarified. "So, ok, this fight wasn't so great, but hey, no one died, nothing got stolen, and everyone's ok. Tomorrow night, everyone goes to Glitterdust at ten, and we are going to dance. Anyone that doesn't show up, I'm going to your house and dragging you out."

Normally, after every bad fight, weird piece of news, anything odd, we had reacted to it in the same way; brainstorm for more ideas and train our tails off.

Now Zack had suggested a party. Everyone looked at him, looked at each other, and then looked back at him. That was the best damn idea we had heard in a month.

"Can I bring Chloe?" was Ethan's only question.

* * *

I must have slept for almost twelve hours, but by the time I woke up in the very late afternoon, I actually felt close to normal again. I badly wanted to call Monica; my heart was still feeling pretty bruised from yesterday, but when I checked my messages, she had left me a text.

_See you later tonight, promise. We'll talk then._

Well. That would have to be enough. I would have dearly loved to talk to Mom too, but as true per most academy attacks, all of our parents had been called out of town before they had shown up. Mom had been somewhere in Pakistan for close to three weeks now, with at least another two weeks' worth of work in front of her. Whatever trouble the academy was stirring up wasn't necessarily limited to the superhero front; or perhaps some of the non-super bad guys were just taking advantage of the generally chaotic scene to make trouble, it was hard to tell. At any rate, she had been gone more often than not lately, and we didn't get the chance to talk every day.

Tonight couldn't come soon enough.

* * *

Glitterdust lived up to its name, with glitter being the primary form of decoration. It was on the dance floor, the paint on the walls, the murals, the furniture, and sprinkling down from the ceiling as well. A huge light show of lasers, colored lights of all descriptions, and a mirrored ball, all pulsing in time to the beat, made for a very cool place. Zack and Magenta had gotten us all VIP cards, so we were whisked to the front of the long line, along with several other of Maxville's coolest people. Some of the other club-goers stared at the nerdy Ethan or Will in his horn-rimmed glasses with contempt as they passed by, but no one really cared about that tonight. We were all just looking for a good time, a chance to relax, and some time to forget and put things at a distance.

The girls all looked amazing in their clubbing clothes, and the rest of us guys (minus Zack, who was the DJ) were enjoying the show as they danced together, oblivious to the rest of the club. He had the weirdest dance mix sometimes, house, techno, some rock, pop, and dance mixes of other songs, sometimes from the strangest places, but all of it completely rocked. The music overpowered nearly all conversation, but no one would have it any other way.

_Easy now, let me see ya move! Let your mind. Move! Put me online. The music is my life!_

The place was completely packed to the rafters with clubbers, everyone eager to have a good time. And right now it made it a really awesome place to be.

_I'm the lyrical Jesse James!_

No one needed rescuing here. No one needed to be healed. Everyone just wanted to have fun.

_Obstacles are inefficient, follow your intuition, free your inner soul and break away from tradition._

Will and Ethan finally left me to go dance with their girlfriends, and I quickly lost myself in the crowd. There were some girls who were eyeing me, and a moving target was harder to hit. I went to find a drink to get away from the worst of them.

 _My images reflect in the enemy's eye, And his images reflect in mine the same time_.

Glitterdust didn't sell alcohol, mostly because it catered to high school kids as well as adults, but I really didn't want to even try to get drunk tonight. I grabbed a pop quickly, and kept moving through the crowd, tossing it off quickly, and looking for another relatively safe place to just enjoy the music and people-watching without getting an invitation to dance. Not that I didn't like dancing, I just would have rather danced with-.

_She's a battleaxe in pinstripes!_

Monica. Monica was standing right over there, half in shadow by a pillar, and staring straight at me. I blinked, certain that it was just a trick of the light, a figment of my imagination, just some other girl that looked like her. Surely she wouldn't be out in public.

_Yesterday wasn't half as tough as this time This time isn't Hell, Last time, I couldn't tell This mind wasn't well Next time, hope I'm..._

She didn't go away. She actually smiled at me. I finally broke and came over to her, still stunned. It was definitely her, no mistaking it.

"What are you doing here?" I asked incredulously as I got close. She was always the cautious one.

"Who's going to believe it's me?" she pointed out reasonably. "The lights, the shadows, the music, the three dozen girls ready to jump you the second you look unattached…"

"Jealous?" I asked a bit acidly, wanting to convince her this was the height of insanity. It lacked the bite it should have though. I was a little distracted by Monica's outfit; shiny dark blue and clingy, with silver jewelry, it was a lot more revealing than anything I had ever seen her in. And she looked damn good in it.

_Give me just a second and I'll be all right, Surely one more moment couldn't break my heart._

"Terribly," she confessed, and glanced over her shoulder at some of the other girls in the club. "The phans don't bother me, that's business. But the vultures over there that are waiting for me to leave, yeah, they do."

"I can take care of myself," I said a little defensively.

"I know you can. I'd just rather you not have to," she said with an odd tilt of her head, smiling a little. _This is such an odd conversation._

"You gave me my life back. You gave me even more than that. And I-."

"You don't owe me anything-."

_I promise you my heart, just promise to sing._

"I love you. I didn't know I would ever, you know, _find_ anyone. I just… I know you said you don't like it when those fans of your push themselves on you."

"And you want to?"

"Any objections?"

I pulled her close, my hands around her waist, sliding across the slick fabric over her skin. I lowered my head, breathing slightly into her dark hair, smelling the faint scent of something spicy and sweet.

"No," I said into her ear. "But you're crazy for doing this."

I felt her laugh a little in relief, her hands circling my shoulders as we swayed in time to the music.

_Everyone that burns has to learn from the pain._

We danced through several songs, and even as I felt myself relaxing, I was telling her of everything that had happened yesterday. The attack, Skybolt's escape, my own near-death, Layla's injuries, even Egret's offer.

_Is there anything to feel? Is it pain that makes you real? Cut me off before it kills me._

She listened attentively, her large, dark eyes fixed on mine, and a lot of the tension just slipped away, now that I knew I had someone else who would help me get through this.

"I'm so sorry about Layla. I tried to take her pain for her, but it's so hard at that distance. I tried to do everything I could…" she trailed off, and rested her head on my chest for a moment, and I cradled her. It was bad for me, but she hadn't even been able to act directly.

"I can do more. I've been thinking about this for months, going over everything," she said finally, catching my eyes again. "I have a plan."

There was only one thing that she would have a plan about that would have gotten her out in public, and I felt my spirits take a huge leap. She had a plan on how to take down the academy. A real, solid plan, if her urgency in meeting me was any indication.

"Tell me," I said, and she jerked her head towards a side exit.

"In private," she said, and I nodded, following her out. Even here the music was audible, but much, much quieter.

"I just have a few questions first," she said, her arms still wrapped around me.

"Shoot."

"Would you… be willing to use your powers on some of the other academy members? Help them like you did me?"

I only had to think a second on that. I had been able to break the artificial bonds Monica had on her own powers without a whole lot of difficulty, once I had known to look. If I could do that to other academy members, maybe we could turn others to our cause.

"Yeah," I said simply.

"And would you be willing to risk your own reputation to bring the academy down?" she asked more earnestly.

I thought about that for a longer moment. Would I be willing to risk Phoenix, the reputation I had made for myself in defiance of my father's crimes, to stop their crazed rampages? Would I do it for her? Or just because it was right?

Both.

"Yeah," I said again.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes," I said quickly.

_I still have my name, I still have my face, I have not run away from home. Does it seem so wrong, if now embrace, every single thing I've never known._

Music echoed from the door as Monica smiled at me, her fingertips brushing my temples.

"Every good plan needs an element of surprise," she started. And then every vestige of emotion suddenly dropped from her face.

"Warren, I've been recalled."

Blinding agony shot through my head, overwhelming me with pain shot through from temple to temple, until I dropped into blessed black oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own any of the following bands, songs, lyrics, or music. All are used without permission and with no profit. But if you figured out the Glitterdust song clips before this part, you get a No Prize!
> 
> She's a battleaxe in pinstripes – Lordi, Who's Your Daddy
> 
> I'm the lyrical Jesse James – Snap, The Power
> 
> Easy now, let me see ya move! Let your mind. Move! Put me online The music is my life – C+C Music Factory, Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
> 
> Obstacles are inefficient, follow your intuition, free your inner soul and break away from tradition. – Black Eyed Peas, Let's Get it Started
> 
> My images reflect in the enemy's eye, And his images reflect in mine the same time – Massive Attack with Mos Def, I Against I
> 
> Give me just a second and I'll be all right, Surely one more moment couldn't break my heart –Daniel Beddingfield, Gotta Get Through This
> 
> I promise you my heart, just promise to sing – AFI, Prelude 12/21
> 
> I still have my name, I still have my face, I have not run away from home. Does it seem so wrong, if now embrace, every single thing I've never known. – Iris, Annie Would I Lie to You
> 
> Is there anything to feel? Is it pain that makes you real? Cut me off before it kills me – Goo Goo Dolls, Long Way Down
> 
> Yesterday wasn't half as tough as this time This time isn't Hell, Last time, I couldn't tell This mind wasn't well Next time, hope I'm... – Barenaked Ladies, Too Little Too Late
> 
> Everyone that burns has to learn from the pain – Limp Bizkit, Nookie


	41. Interlude:  Saving Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short little interlude from Monica's point of view, with a bit of a songfic from Nickelback's "Savin' Me," whom I don't own.

_Prison gates won't open up for me_

_On these hands and knees I'm crawlin'_

It wasn't love at first sight. My first sight of him was behind a wall of fire after battling through a jungle of possessed vines. He was protecting our prey, and was more than angry enough to burn us all to death. He attacked us without mercy, once Cutter and I provoked him. And he had no hesitation about sending Speed out to nearly suffocate me.

No, it wasn't love at all. At that point, I was afraid of him. Not of the pain, of the damage. Pain ceased to have meaning for me shortly after my grandmother died. But having to deal with injury, that was something entirely different. It took Cutter months to get her mobility back, and she was far tougher than me.

Maybe the academy knew that; they loved to test students beyond their comfort levels. That was probably one of the reasons they sent me to spy in Maxville. It wasn't just because I was the sanest; it was because the mission would make me more able to cope with fear.

I thank them for that now.

* * *

_Well I'm terrified of these four walls_

The same message for week after week, "Observe these heroes, and report their timing and response." Again and again. I should have been angry. Instead all I could muster up was a vague irritation. Feeling anything too much gave me a feeling of panic, as if someone was watching and would punish me for it. It got better as time went on, but with each message from the academy, it reminded me of whom I belonged to.

My powers only worked right if I kept using them. That was how I kept them under control. I had powers no hero would use, and they would surely jail me for being what I was. I had no reason to doubt the academy. Everything they had told me came true, in one way or another. Why should I doubt them?

But nearly nine months out of contact will dull even the sharpest edge of fear. The academy is a pressure cooker, the better to focus the energy of its students, but you can't deny they get results. Even away from the constant fear of the academy, I found a lot of use in what they taught me. And it was easier to do without the fear.

I thank them for that too.

* * *

_These iron bars can't hold my soul in_

He still frightened me when we met again. There had been no warning that he was going to join the real world, and certainly none that he would end up at my job. He was so angry… I expected him to take me in immediately. I honestly expected to be in jail that very night. All I knew about the Bureau was what the academy had told me, and none of that was good. I expected horrors from them, above and beyond anything I had endured before. So I used the last weapon I had left; words.

Subtle threats were second nature, but fear of exposure wouldn't keep him at bay. And I honestly didn't want to spend so much time with someone who would hate me. When I had tortured students for the academy, I never had to spend time with them except when I was in control. Being at someone else's mercy was new and unsettling. I only had one thing to offer him to keep him from rethinking his decision. I couldn't tell him about the academy, and I had no elaborate lies planned. So I set out to distract him with truth.

It was only my intention to have him not hate me. I didn't intend to turn away from everything I had become. I never intended to like him. I never intended to fall in love.

* * *

_Heaven's gates won't open up for me_

I started to help him be a hero purely out of a desire to keep him from picking at me further. It was better for me to give him answers before there were questions, or to only give him answers to make him think and not tear at me deeper. The only answers I had were those of my own family, and so that's what I had to give him.

He unsettled me. I had expected him to be more arrogant, more cruel. But he treated me more fairly as his enemy than I had been treated in four years at the academy as a student and teacher. And that baffled me. Everything I had learned told me one thing, but how he acted was another thing entirely.

He actually _trusted_ me. He answered his emergency phone in front of me. No one had given me trust in a very long time, and I found I liked it. So I helped. I covered for him when he was off saving people, I drove him to his rescues, I even pinpointed villains for him. We actually worked together as normal people, something I hadn't done in a very long time.

I would have liked him for that alone.

* * *

_With these broken wings I'm fallin'_

He made me use my powers for something I hadn't done for years, to use them to help and not to harm. I helped _him_ use his abilities more wisely, for both of our sakes. And that was the turning point. I had been using my powers on occasional unsuspecting and unconscious patients, but I hadn't since Warren had been partnered with me.

He called me on it, hammered me with impassioned logic, and everything I thought I knew suddenly fell out from under me. Backlash set in, he brought me out of it, and nearly devastated me with what he had figured out.

* * *

_Hurry I'm fallin', I'm fallin'_

I could thank Joy instead for putting my mind back together. But Warren was the one that woke me up to what had happened to me in the first place. He had ripped me open with knives, and could have left me bleeding, knowing he had removed an agent from the ranks of the enemy. Instead he brought everything to bear to help me, even at the cost of humiliation and pain.

* * *

_Show me what it's like To be the last one standing_

I learned more about superheroes from him in one month than I had in four years at the academy. I learned their philosophies, their reasons, their methods and plans, all focused through his eyes. He looked at a lot of angles, checking things from all sides. He was no idealist, which made things easier to accept than from one of his innocent, wide-eyed friends.

* * *

_And teach me wrong from right_

I had never spent so much time thinking and analyzing every part of myself, putting myself in a thousand scenarios, trying to figure out the best "right" way to help. And I found myself enjoying it, even if it made me want to scream with frustration sometimes. I even surprised him once or twice with my answers, in a good way. I had the advantage of distance from actual hero work, a luxury he didn't have.

* * *

_And I'll show you what I can be_

I admired him for what he was doing, and was grateful to him for helping me. He was fair, even-handed, patient, intelligent, passionate, and kind. And also gorgeous. I may have been in supervillain rehabilitation, but I wasn't dead.

There were also times when I wanted to kill him, or at least hear him scream. Sometimes it was just from sheer frustration, but other times it was when he kept trying to keep me on the straight and narrow. _What if your "straight and narrow" is too small? What happens when you fall?_ I wanted to ask him. But I didn't. If the good path was so easy to tread, more people would do it.

I had had a life. I had had a philosophy. I hadn't been good, but I had been skilled, respected by way of fear, if not love. But now everything I was had to change. Nothing I had been was good enough anymore. _Why do I have to change everything? Shouldn't there be a compromise? What is he risking? What is he changing?_ I had asked myself. It hurt, knowing there was only so much respect I could gain in his eyes by being what I was. It was what I was becoming that he was beginning to respect.

And I wasn't sure if I even liked that person yet.

* * *

_All I need is you_

But when he faced Hammerfist, all frustrations were cast aside. Yes, he was on a high horse, but he could have been dragged off by anyone that knew what he was doing. And regardless, he still let me help him.

I wanted his respect. He could have quit on me at any time, danger be damned, if he said the right things to the right people. I may not have known if I liked who I was becoming yet, but I didn't think I'd ever learn if I stopped in the middle. And if Warren died, I wasn't sure what the hell I would do.

I didn't even think when I saw the bullets fly. Part of me wanted revenge if he was truly dead. And the rest of me was crying when I saw him go down.

Maybe I had fallen in love with my rescuer a little bit. But I would be no princess in an ivory tower, to need saving at every opportunity. If he had died, I would have gone down in an act of heroism. If he hadn't… I would have dealt with it then.

Then I broke down in front of him, again. Hammerfist had been captured, and I realized I would never be able to openly help him. I hadn't realized how much it meant to me, how much he had rubbed off on me. Then he kissed me.

His kiss _was_ like fire; I hadn't expected it to be any other way. But it wasn't just physical heat, it had been the tenderness, the genuine care, the lack of fear, and the sheer trust that made me want to burst into tears again. I don't know if he'd thought less of me if I'd been weepier, but some academy training still held. You don't go around crying at everything, not if you want to live, even if it's enough to break you.

* * *

_And oh I scream for you_

I had never had a partner before, someone that would watch my back while I was fighting, who _needed_ my help occasionally, who wasn't too proud to ask, even if he was strong enough to take on most things on his own. Cutter had been no partner; she had been the team leader and I had been her shadow, nothing more.

Even when we had to separate so I wouldn't be caught, I was a hundred times more comfortable with him than I had been at the academy. That pained me sometimes; that I had wasted so much of my life on them. I found myself trying to justify things I had done, facts I had learned, just so it wouldn't seem so much like I had made such a huge mistake for so long.

That was something I kept to myself though.

* * *

_Say it for me Say it to me And I'll leave this life behind me Say it if it's worth saving me_

That night in the sanctum, I hadn't intended to say I loved him. I hadn't quite intended to ambush him that way. I had wanted to let him know how much I cared; even if everything was driving me crazy, he still meant more to me than anyone ever had. If his friend hadn't interrupted, maybe things would have gone better. But I wasn't totally disappointed in the outcome. Even if I wasn't sure exactly how I thought or felt about everything, just knowing he cared about me as much as I did gave me more strength than I thought possible.

It turned out I needed it.

The academy had faded to a ghostly specter in my mind, but once they ramped up their threats, I quickly found that even love couldn't grant me the peace I wanted. The academy had to go. And now I actually had the motivation to want to do it. This was a task for a host of heroes, but I only had him and me.

It would have to be enough.

He doesn't know my plan, but he said he trusts me. He might not like it. And he might not like how it turns out either. The academy was my home, my life, and my driving principle for four very intense years. They gave me knowledge and gifts that he isn't even aware of, things that make me what I am. And I would not be a betrayer.

Warren finished what they started, but I would only be complete when we could get through this together. I know it wouldn't be what he expected.

I only hope he won't hate me when he wakes up.

_Help me, I'm fallin'_


	42. Captured

"Wake up boy," a low, grating voice drawled.

I came awake all at once, with no grogginess or aching head. But since I awoke in complete blackness, I had no idea where I was or who was talking.

I struggled briefly, quickly learning a few things. I was kneeling on the ground, my ankles shackled to the floor. My wrists and elbows were cuffed together behind my back, and my wrists themselves were tethered to the floor. There was a collar around my neck, chained to my elbow cuffs behind and the floor in front. It was pretty obvious that any kind of struggling would cut off my air. I was a little cool, and in someplace vaguely damp that smelled of earth, dust, and mold. A basement maybe? I also realized I was in my costume. Since I definitely hadn't been when-.

_Monica betrayed you._

I shoved that thought aside for a moment and powered up, hoping the flames would let me see my captor or even a way out. Fear wasn't even an option at this point; I had been captured, probably by a supervillain, and I had to get out as soon as I could. I could be scared in a minute or two.

My fire threw odd shadows around the room, showing I was in a small concrete cell with no light fixtures, no windows, and only a single massive metal door. _That_ was currently propped open, with a dark-robed man standing in the doorway. He was unmasked, and I could clearly see he was old, well into his seventies, clean shaven and neat as a pin, as if he had just walked from an office… or a courtroom. I realized his words had been in a heavy Texan accent.

"Ah, that's better," he said. "It's important for you to hear this." His voice drawled so much that better sounded like "bettah" and hear sounded like "heah."

 _Judge Libra_ , I thought, recognizing the elderly psychic supervillain. One of the Bureau's Ten Most Wanted. Monica- Painbreaker's intended mentor.

"Hear what?" I growled, staring at him defiantly.

"What your fate will be. You have been brought here to be judged for your crimes."

"What crimes?"

"Of being what you are. Of denying the true potential of your powers to revel in your petty-minded ability to harm others. Of bringing pain when you could've brought… peace."

I stiffened in shock at that last remark. I wasn't sure if that was an allusion to my real name or just a dramatic pause.

"You will be judged by a jury of your peers tomorrow morning for the totality of your transgressions. But for now I'm putting you on a bench trial for your most recent crimes," he continued blithely, a smug little smile on his face.

Dealing with someone like Son of Silver was generally straightforward but deadly. Dealing with the Judge was something entirely different. The Judge had very specific scripts in his head for how things were supposed to go; he had dramatic speeches, last minute reveals, unknown witnesses, unexpected evidence, and courtroom confessions. Those juries that had survived his trials said they went just like any TV or movie courtroom drama, and woe betide those that disrupted his storyline. And when you were dealing with a supervillain that could change your mind for you, there was only a certain amount of nose-tweaking you could do before he chose to crush your mind like a grape. Of course, that would mean I would have to keep my cool in the face of everything he would throw at me.

"What crime?" I asked again.

"You chose to heal only your teammate instead of the dozen of helpless citizens scattered around that plaza. There were people with broken bones, gashes, burns-."

"Rose Queen was _dying,_ " I snapped, almost forgetting about the chains and half-throttling myself when I tried to make my point.

"Is that so? And what about all those others? Couldn't you have helped them after you helped your own?" he asked almost kindly.

 _Screw you_ , I thought privately, but didn't say anything. Of course he would guess which buttons to push; it was part of this thing to wring the right emotional reactions out of his sick little scenes. And if he didn't have to use his powers, all the better.

"I don't see much in the way of remorse, so I have no alternative than to go ahead with your punishment. This will just be a token, you understand, something that'll show what awaits you if you're convicted tomorrow. Now, I suppose you're too young to remember the Grim Reaper?"

I just shook my head, carefully breathing through my nose, taking deep calming breaths. I thought I knew what was coming now…

"He was a good friend of mine, a good family man and handy provider. Unfortunately he was killed by superheroes when he was just trying to make a living. It was a most untimely death. He had a rather unusual power, one I haven't seen in decades; pain enhancement."

Shock was a necessary and expected reaction, but I didn't have to fake much. Though I was shoving down an inappropriate desire to laugh because the Judge had bought into the same bullshit the academy had tried to foist on Monica.

The thought of her brought my bubbling mirth to an abrupt stop.

"His grandchild inherited his power, and is now working with me to deal out appropriate and proper punishment to the guilty. Painbreaker, he's yours," Judge Libra said ponderously, stepping aside to let Monica, in full costume, glide into the room. With a nasty chuckle, he slammed the door shut behind him, the heavy iron sounding like the closing of a tomb.

Monica took two steps over to me and went to her knees, bringing her level with me. She didn't speak, but took a moment to remove her mask and my helmet. I couldn't help but notice she didn't make a move to unchain me though.

"Scream," she said softly.

"What?"

"Scream. He expects you to scream. And if you don't, I'll have to make you, and I don't want to do that," she said insistently.

I glared, my fire flaring enough to illuminate her face fully. She looked like someone who had just gotten news of her own death, full of remorse and sadness and, oddly enough, faint hope. She didn't look triumphant, or crazed, or pleased, which was what I had been dreading.

_She asked me if I trusted her._

I screamed.

"Is this part of your plan?" I asked sharply.

Monica bowed her head for a second.

"Yes."

"Is it a good plan?"

"Yes. It'll destroy the academy as we know it, if it works."

Supervillain plans rarely acknowledged the possibility of defeat. Well, superhero plans didn't either, but they were generally a little more on the sane side.

"And having me chained up is part of this?" I pressed.

"He had to think it was real. They all have to think this is real. We'll give them exactly what they think they want, and then turn the bait sour. We're going to turn that iron fortress into a house of cards," she said, her voice low but intense.

 _She totally believes that. And she said "we" not "I."_ I was starting to get the drift of where this was going, but I really, really didn't like it.

"How?"

"We're going to infiltrate the academy."

" _What?!"_ I demanded.

I had thought about that a few years ago, when Veronica Powers had first mentioned that Royal Pain had wanted me for her school. But how the hell would I have made that convincing? I used to think if anyone could have faked a dark side shift, I could have, but not now. Not after having talked to Monica. I couldn't brutalize the other students, or keep up the unending façade of cruelty. It'd kill my Mom if she didn't know I was faking, my friends would be devastated, I'd be betraying all of the superhero community and all of my fans, and my dad's family would probably go nuclear.

Not to mention: how would I get in? Surely they'd read my mind; we knew they had psychics. What was to keep them from just knowing I was a spy and decapitating me on the spot to spare themselves the trouble? Or setting someone like Monica after me to break me so I'd work for them "willingly?" It wasn't a practical plan, for all it had elements of poetic justice in it.

"Infiltrate," she repeated, and leaned forward to put her hand in mine. Since I was still on fire, I quickly doused myself, sending the room into blackness.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Please, hear me out," she begged.

She gripped my hand hard and I finally squeezed back.

"This better be good."

"We infiltrate, they think you've come willingly, at least to a point. Once we're inside, we can do what your own spies couldn't. I can get access to nearly any person in there and take them from their room or class without having to give a reason, just because of my position within the academy. If you can help them, break them out from thinking they _have_ to use their powers for the academy, they'll turn, and they can disable the defenses."

Now I knew what she meant when she had talked about risking my reputation. _Jesus…_

"What would your friends and family do if they thought we had kidnapped you?"

"They'd come after me," I said. "They couldn't leave me with you if they thought-."

"They'd come, all of them would come. Together, all of them against the academy."

"That's what they want!" Exactly what we had been planning _not_ to do for three years-.

"Exactly. The academy thinks they'll have the superheroes right where they want them. They'll bring everything _they_ have to bear, thinking to use the academy defenses to overwhelm the superheroes. But they won't know they're gone until it's too late."

I stared into the darkness, thinking, only knowing where she was by her faint breath on my cheek, she had gone so still.

Fundamentally, it wasn't a bad plan. Dangerous, of course, with a lot of variables, but it wasn't a totally bad plan. Disabling all the rays and beams and traps the academy had would negate the biggest reason to avoid a head-on confrontation. Though the villains would be more ruthless, the heroes would have a better reason to fight, and also every person we could turn against the academy could aid the heroes, at the very least by not being in the fight.

"How the hell are we supposed to convince these people to turn? We won't have much time, maybe a week tops, before _someone_ tries to get me out of there. It took you years; we won't have that much time," I asked. I felt a little thread of uncertainty as I spoke. I wasn't saying yes yet, though I probably didn't have much of a choice now, but still knew it was almost a foregone conclusion. I was still uncertain about being rescued. Would the Bureau try to convince my friends it was too dangerous? They wouldn't know this was a trick; they _needed_ to know. My mom _had_ to know. It would kill her to think both her husband and son had turned.

"I wasn't the only reluctant person at the academy. Every single reluctant person ended up in my workroom at one point or another, and even after… they're helping the academy for the same reasons I did, fear and necessity for survival. If we can give them any kind of hope, they'll just be happy to go back to some kind of normal life. Trust me, I spent a lot of time trying to convince them otherwise…" She stopped, and I could hear her ragged breathing as she tried to hold back sobs.

"You can give them hope; you can snap whatever physical ties the psychics psyched them into, like me. And… they'll trust you. They have no reason to trust me. I can't do this alone," she continued. "Scream again."

I had had several very strange conversations in my life, but this one was so far taking the cake. I screamed again for the Judge's ears as I digested Monica's last comment.

This whole thing gave her a second chance, a way to try to redeem every person she had ever tortured. But it was absolutely impossible without me.

 _Is this just for her?_ _Was she being selfish?_ _No, don't be stupid; whatever they might do to me if I got caught would be nothing on her._ She was risking both of our lives for a greater good. It was the hallmark of a superhero plan if I had ever seen one. Of course, usually I would have consented before hand but…

 _She did ask you at Glitterdust, even if she had to be discrete._ Still, there were one or two other considerations.

"What about the psychics? Won't they just read our minds?"

She paused for a second, and laced her fingers with mine.

"I had a lot of time to think about this. There are three very strong psychics at the academy, and maybe a half-dozen less powerful ones. And they're constantly at work; we'd see them in trance all the time, even during the classes they taught. But if they were really reading everyone's minds and forcing them to work for the academy more or less willingly, why would they need me?"

I blinked twice in the darkness. Why _would_ they need a physical torturer if they could mentally coerce their students?

"Insurance? In case someone was shielded?" I hazarded. Some people had really good natural shields or even had powers that made them immune to psychic powers. It was rare, but wasn't unheard of.

"A little. But more for another reason. Look, you had some powerful psychics at Sky High, right? How many people could they affect at a time?"

The only really powerful psychics I had had contact with had been Elise, the president of Psychic Club, and Ms. Olsen, one of my teachers. While Ms. Olsen could talk to most of us telepathically simultaneously, that wasn't really a powerful aspect of her abilities. And when Elise had tried to take over one of our minds during Gauntlet runs, it was always only one at a time.

"One," I said.

"One person absolutely, a few people strongly, or a lot more just a little. A constant low-level influence. Like a slow mental acid," she clarified.

"So that's why you didn't-."

"-Realize what they were doing to me for so long, exactly. They have all their psychics concentrating on keeping everyone at the academy on a low boil, and they had to be constant, or it doesn't work. I used to wonder why the psychic teachers worked in shifts, but now I know. They won't try too hard to read your mind, because I should have broken you before I take you to them. If you act the right way, they won't look at you as closely."

"Look, why now? And how am I going to convince them I suddenly wanted to come to academy? You found me and decided to deliver me all tied up in a bow?"

"You have no idea how angry they were the other day when you were caught on tape using your healing powers. They expected someone in the Bureau to make Egret's offer. They have… a very distorted view of the Bureau. They think you _have_ to do anything they tell you. So they thought you were going to go into seclusion and they'd never be able to get their hands on you. Judge Libra decided to take action and recalled me to help. When he puts you on trial you'll have to make a choice between going willingly or something really bad."

"How bad?"

"Bad. It's Judge Libra, trust me, it'll be bad. He didn't tell me the specifics, but I know he's going to send a message to the Mayor to let the Champions of Justice know where you are."

"Fuck, they're going to be my jury," I said, fear returning redoubled. Powerful psychics could only affect one person at a time, but this was something entirely different. There were psychics, powerful psychics, and then there was Judge Libra. The fact that he was over seventy and still on the Top Ten most wanted list was both unheard of and very impressive. He regularly controlled over a dozen people easily.

He didn't necessarily want me dead, unlike most people he put on trial, but since the point was to make me go to the academy "willingly…"

"I know. And if I hadn't been willing, he would have found someone else to capture you. Look, when they asked you why you accepted his offer, say you did it for real reasons; tell them the truth. Tell them you wanted to spare your friends pain, tell them you didn't want to be a healer for the Bureau, even tell them you hate the academy and hope to see them all rot in hell. You wouldn't be the only reluctant person to join up."

"That'll go over really well."

"They don't care if you're a gibbering wreck or slightly belligerent as long as you fix up the students," she pointed out.

I stared down in the blackness, gripping her hand hard.

"A week?"

"No more, I don't think either of could keep things up longer than that. And your friends won't wait any longer either."

A week to stop our greatest foes. One week. And possibly killing everything I had worked for for the past almost four years.

"This'll kill my mom," I said finally. I didn't want to voice more than that.

"I don't want to hurt Joy either, I don't. But it all depends on them thinking this is real, at least initially. I left things for your friends, some maps and stuff to help them when the time comes-."

"How the hell did you do that, leave it in their mailbox?"

"No, I broke into Zack's house and left it in his bedroom. He's the only one who knows about us, and it'll give your friends places to strike when they come to break you out. And trust me, considering his room, he won't find it for a week."

"You broke into his house?"

"Hey, I got decent grades in Breaking and Entering."

I laughed silently, my shoulders shaking.

"What if something goes wrong?" I asked.

"God, don't even think about that," she whispers. "I can't do this without you. Please."

 _Forgive me_.

She didn't say it, but I knew she wanted to.

"Scream again," she whispered, and I gave a howl of agony for the benefit of Judge Libra.

"We do this together," I said, and I heard her give a choked sob of relief. "The trial tomorrow, what's going to happen?"

"Judge Libra will do his thing, bring in your friends to judge you and to use against you. When you pick to go with me, I'll provide a distraction so they can escape. You're going to have to act broken for most of the trial, like I've worked you over, so showing initiative would look out of place."

I clenched my jaw belligerently at the thought of having to play the victim.

"The Judge never worked with me or the Grim Reaper during a trial, so he's forgotten the most fundamental interaction of our two powers," she added with savage enjoyment.

"'Physical pain overrides mental compulsion,'" I quoted from class.

"Exactly. If I can even tag one of your teammates, they can take care of themselves. Or I'll 'accidentally' hit the Judge," she said.

"I'm not used to this," I groused a little, rattling the chains. I wasn't used to at least having a little control over what I was doing, and tomorrow my friends and I would be in the control of a current and former supervillain.

"I thought the chains would help your mindset," she said, her voice repressing laughter. She sounded relieved, terribly relieved that she had managed to get Phase One of her plan into action, and was almost giddy at being able to _do_ something. She, far more than me, had been unable to do much to help herself during these past couple of years. She needed that measure of control back.

"I didn't know you were into bondage," I quipped, and Monica had to bury her face in my shoulder to keep from laughing out loud.

"You're _horrible_ ," she hissed in my ear, still snickering.

"Hey, I'm going to be walking into the lion's den and asking it to bite. I at least get to score a few points," I said.

Monica was near-silently laughing as she put my helmet back on by touch, and I could hear her replacing her mask.

"I'll see you in the morning," she growled in her distorted voice as she left, slamming the door behind her.

After that I could only kneel in my bonds and wait for the coming dawn.

* * *

I couldn't exactly sleep very well, tied up like I was, but I managed to fitfully doze throughout the night. I had no way to tell what time it was, but it seemed forever before the door finally clanked open, bringing painfully bright light with it. After hours of total darkness even the faint light from the hallway was nearly intolerable, even with photosensitive lenses. I couldn't even tell who was in the doorway for a very long moment.

"The Judge is already in his chambers," Monica greeted me, her voice distorted by her mask. "It's about eight a.m. And he just sent the message to the Mayor."

"Won't be long," I said quietly. I had had a lot of time to think about what we had discussed last night, and to say I had second thoughts would have been a gross understatement. But there was no going back now.

"Look, here's how you have to act. As far as the Judge knows, I broke you pretty badly last night. A little defiance is expected, but you should be cringing every time I come near you or touch you. Don't look straight at me unless I force you to, and if I gouge you, scream. Don't talk to me unless I order it. It's ok to look at the Judge, but be a little deferential. He expects you to fight almost reflexively, but I'm supposed to keep you in line. He'll have most of his attention on the jury. He can't afford to lose control of them," she explained as she unshackled me enough to walk, her voice confident, matter-of-fact, but also oddly flat.

That suddenly drove home exactly _what_ she was and what she had been. She wasn't just guessing at how I should behave, she knew exactly how I would act, because she had seen it dozens if not hundreds of times. _And now she's trying to make up for it. Holy fuck I hope this works._

She marched me up the stairs of what seemed to be a basement, through a heavy door, down a dusty, wood-paneled corridor, and into what seemed to be an old, dusty, but perfectly normal courtroom. I wondered exactly where we were. This wasn't something cobbled together for the purpose. It looked just like an old abandoned civil building, a real courtroom expressly built for that purpose.

Wasn't there more than one small town that Maxville had absorbed over the years? Yeah, sometimes kids from Maxville's high schools came out to some of the abandoned buildings on the edges of town for keg parties. We weren't more than an hour away from the middle of Maxville. The Champions would be here soon.

There were high windows on one side, facing north, and I watched them like a hawk until I caught a glimpse of movement high in the sky. Part of me was hoping for a glimpse of my friends. The rest of me wanted them to stay away. We had gone up against a lot of supervillains, but none of them had been this bad. And we hadn't faced a powerful psychic since graduation.

Even though I knew this was going to happen, that I knew it _had_ to happen, I was still silently willing the Champions to turn around.

Guardian's red, white, and blue became visible against the cloudy sky, rocketing in high and fast, probably hoping to drop Viscosity and Violet Cavey somewhere hidden, or ready to have Rose Queen storm the building with plants. I swallowed and turned to stare at the door to the judge's chambers. Were there windows in there too? Did Judge Libra need to have line of sight? Or was he powerful enough that he could just sense them? Ms. Olsen hadn't needed line of sight to talk to us telepathically, but Elise had. I couldn't quite remember the Judge's range from class, but-.

My thoughts cut off as I could actually see Judge Libra take control of Guardian. He went from his high and fast arc to a leisurely descent below the windows, as casual as if he were just going for a stroll.

_Dammit Will, speed couldn't have saved you, not from him! Why didn't you have Ethan and Magenta try to sneak in?_

_Maybe because you got captured and they got a little frantic?_

That little voice in my brain was, as usual, probably right.

"Heroic, if not practical," Painbreaker growled in her distorted voice. She couldn't offer me any words of comfort, but it sounded like her and I was thinking along the same lines.

"Heroes don't have to be practical. It works better if we're not," I said softly. Her hand tightened on my shoulder, and I flinched like I was supposed to, but I knew she meant it as agreement.

Within a few moments the Champions of Justice came walking into the courtroom, filing neatly into the jury box as if everything was fine. It wasn't; I could see by their slightly stiff movements, their terrified, defiant, or angry eyes that the moment they got their control back, there was going to be a reckoning. It was a frightening display of power on Judge Libra's part, and he wasn't even in the damn room! When Elise had attempted to read someone's mind, the best she could do was hold someone motionless. When her friend Tracy, the astral projector, had possessed someone, she could only get him or her to do small motions; she certainly couldn't make them walk normally. This… this was big time.

The Champions kept stealing glances as me when they were allowed. I had been chained up again in front of the judge's bench, and I had to keep my head down. Everything depended on my ability to act now. The Judge got very annoyed when people didn't follow the scripts for his little dramas. If I couldn't pull this off, he'd crush my mind like a grape right before he turned on Monica and my friends.

The gang sat down in the jury box, all of them staring stonily ahead, until Painbreaker stepped out of the shadows. They had never seen her in costume before, but it wasn't too hard to figure out who she might be.

"All rise! Court is now in session, the honorable Judge Libra presiding," she called out clearly, her growling voice echoing oddly in the large room.

My friends rose right on cue, turning as the Judge entered and climbed to his seat, a superior smile on his face.

"You may sit," he said grandly, waving, and they complied with robotic precision.

"Today we have a very important trial ahead of us, and I have promised the accused a jury of his peers. Do they meet with your approval?"

Curiously, I felt no mental pressure to force a response, but I nodded my assent anyway, carefully not looking at the Judge.

"Good, good. Now, the jury. Do you feel you can give an impartial verdict to the accused, once you are aware of all of the facts?"

He must have loosened his control a bit because everyone started yelling at once.

"You can't do this!" Magenta snarled.

"This is totally not fair," Zack yelled.

"He's our friend, we won't do it," Layla cried.

"You're not even a real judge. This isn't legal; he hasn't broken any laws!" Ethan exclaimed.

"You won't get away with this!"

The last was Will, spoken with enough passion and even venom to make Judge Libra raise an eyebrow. With a wave of his hand, everyone fell into obedient silence.

"Hush children. I know this is a little irregular, but I am as much a judge as any other, quite legally and correctly. If you know anything about me, you should know that. And I _will_ get away with this, because, you'll see, it's all very fair. You all, as his 'friends,' are uniquely qualified to be here. And you should count yourselves lucky that you aren't on the other side of judgment."

The Judge's voice held more than a bit of acerbity, and I saw my friends flinch. Whether it was from his control or their own reactions, I wasn't sure.

"Now, the trial will begin. It has come to the attention of this court that the accused, known as Phoenix, has a secondary aspect to his pyrokinetic power, that of healing. Yet, for as long as he has known of it, he has kept it hidden. Using it sparingly if at all, he has passed up countless opportunities to put his power to greater use in the wider world. Selfishly he has chosen to save his strength to fight, to cause further destruction and pain, when he could have been healing others of their misery. It is a shameful act," he pronounced, glaring at me. "What do you have to say for yourself? How do you plead?"

Overwhelming guilt flooded me as I realized my mistake. I should have gone to the Bureau when I first figured out what I could do. I should have never put on a costume, never should have fought. I should have taken Egret's offer. I was a selfish, greedy fool, wanting to redeem someone else's mistakes over doing what was truly right-.

Something within me rebelled as I felt scalding tears starting to run down my cheeks, coupled with a bolt of agony from my neck as Monica dug her finger knives into my flesh. The flash of intense pain cut through the guilt, which vanished like a popped soap bubble. I found myself staring up at Judge Libra as Monica kept a death grip on my shoulder.

"Answer the judge," she growled.

 _He did that to me,_ I realized. He had made me feel so guilty. I hadn't even felt the mental pressure that remembered from Ms. Olsen and Elise before he was already through my barriers. Monica had helped with the pain to override his compulsions, but it galled me that I still had to play the fool for him.

"Guilty. I'm sorry," I said, looking down again. I could practically feel the Judge grinning in triumph over my head and felt heat flash along my hands. I wonder if he'd be so damn smug if his robes were on fire? Monica shook me slightly again, rattling my chains, and I flinched away. She could probably tell what I was thinking; considering she was right behind me and could feel the heat even through that tent she called a costume.

"Phoenix, it's not _his_ decision-," Will started, and then was cut off abruptly.

The Judge wouldn't mind a little hint of defiance; it gave him openings for his big courtroom speeches, so I stiffened my back a little, as if Will's comment had given me heart. Well, it wasn't exactly acting at all.

My friends cared enough for me not only to risk themselves to save me (which, as superheroes, was at least a weekly occurrence) but to let me make my own decisions. They could have weighed in, cajoling me to use my powers more or less, but they hadn't. It wasn't because they didn't have opinions about it, but because they respected me.

And I really, really, hated the academy for forcing me to this kind of action.

"No, it's not his decision Guardian. It's the decision of the people he serves. Superheroes don't own themselves; they are here for the service of the people. Yet Phoenix hasn't done all of his duty. It would be a great shame to see him die for his selfishness when he has so much to make up for. So, Phoenix, there are two sentences available to me," he proclaimed, looking down at me from his lofty bench.

"One, you spend you time helping the less fortunate, using your powers as you should, aiding those who lack the kind of medical care you take for granted. There is an academy of dedicated younglings that could use your help, and that will serve as your place of penance. If you come willingly, that will work well, for a term of no less than four years."

He paused deliberately, and I asked the expected question.

"Or what?"

"Or instead your sentence will be to experience the pain of those you've refused to help."

Will's hand suddenly shot out and took Layla by the throat.

"He will tear each of their heads off and then rip out his own heart," Judge Libra said calmly. "That will be your penance for your refusal to aid your fellow man." His expression dared me to try him, to force a demonstration, to protest.

I could feel blood draining from my face as that ultimatum, and saw panicked shock on my friends' faces as Judge Libra loosened his control a hair, just to see their expressions. Will looked even worse than he had the other day when he had me in the upper atmosphere, and I could tell he was mentally fighting with everything he had. And he was making just about as much headway as if Ethan would if they had been arm-wrestling.

 _Damn you,_ I thought, staring up at the Judge. For the next twenty seconds I was mentally leveling every single curse I could think of in every language I knew and I few I didn't. If he was listening in, I hoped he was getting an earful. The Judge had a triumphant smile on his face, knowing my answer was a foregone conclusion, but wanting to see me squirm.

"I'll go with you. Just leave them alone," I said finally, slumping in my bonds.

"Phoenix, no!" Will cried as Painbreaker pulled out the keys to my chains.

"As for you all," the Judge said, spearing the Champions of Justice with a glance that shoved them all back into their seats. "Do not think to extract him from his sentence. I know you think you have eyes and ears within the academy, but no more. The spies the Bureau so cowardly sent within have been discovered… and executed."

Panicked expressions of denial and disbelief erupted from the jury box as I heard Monica gasp behind me. She hadn't known either. The Judge must have been saving this terrible piece of news for the dramatically perfect moment. _Hell, no wonder the Bureau hadn't been passing on any information from the insiders in a while. They've been compromised for who knows how long…_

Those people were _dead._

My thoughts weren't exactly on an even keel as Monica unshackled me enough to stand, but I abruptly remembered the second part of the plan. She meant to distract the Judge somehow so my friends could escape.

And here I was feeling like I had just been through a wringer when I had to be ready to move at a moment's notice. _Get it together Peace, come on!_

"Your presence here today was not to judge Phoenix, but to show him the possible consequences of his actions," the Judge was saying as I stood. "We thank the jury for their service to the community."

I tensed, waiting for Monica to move, as the Judge waved his hand again. As one, all my friends slumped over in sleep. I privately thanked anything that was listening for the Judge's personal code of conduct as I heard Monica sigh quietly in relief. At least we wouldn't have to blow our cover already. Trying to free my friends from the Judge's clutches had been my biggest worry. If the Judge had been feeling vindictive, he could have had them all dead before Monica could have acted. Or if my friends had gotten free too soon, all of Monica's planning would have been for naught.

It was a damn scary mess to be in when trusting a supervillain became the lynchpin of our plan.

The three of us strolled out of the old courthouse, strolled as casually as if we were taking a walk in the park. Except for the fact that I still had my hands chained behind my back, and everyone was in costume, and I was in danger of my life, it might have been a pleasant walk.

Behind the courthouse was a pair of cars, one with a waiting driver that stepped out to take the Judge's robes. Underneath had been wearing a normal suit, and he looked distressingly sane as he straightened his tie.

"Now, we're going to take those chains off of you, and Painbreaker will drive you to the academy to begin your sentence. You will do as she bids, or suffer her consequences." He stepped closer, until he was right in my space. Gesturing at Painbreaker, she lifted off my helmet so he could meet my eyes. He stared for a minute, and then took my jaw in his hand. For an old guy, he had a pretty strong grip.

"Having a chained up man in costume along the interstate would be something of a problem, so you will be unbound for your journey. If you think to take advantage of this situation by harming Painbreaker, or me, or simply by attempting to escape, I want you to remember this. Until you step into the academy, I hold your friends' minds with my own. They will not wake until you are behind the academy's locked doors. And if you don't show up, they will not wake, perhaps ever. I'm a good friend with Nightmare, so perhaps you can imagine how terrifying I can make their last moments if you do not submit to your sentence," he said sternly.

I nodded shortly in assent, and he released his grip.

"Very good. Painbreaker, find this man some clothes and get going." The Judge went to his car and looked over his shoulder one last time. "And get him a haircut! Kids these days…"

The door slammed shut and the Judge's driver had them out of sight within minutes. Monica waited a full ten minutes before finally moving to unlock me. She breathed slowly as she took off her mask, and I could see she had been sweating in fear underneath her costume.

"Ok," I said finally, rubbing my wrists a little to restore full circulation. I looked back over to the courthouse, took a deep breath, and met her eyes. "What's next?"

She stared back solemnly.

"Phase Two."


	43. Phase Two

"What happens now?"

Monica finished shedding her costume and carefully put it in the backseat before answering.

"We need to get going. The sooner we get to the academy, the sooner your friends go free," she said, taking out the clothes I had been wearing at Glitterdust and tossing them at me.

"Where did you-?" I started, and then stopped figuring it out for myself.

"Honeybear, who do you think dressed you in your costume?" she asked reasonably, as I gathered my stuff and went to the far side of the car to change.

"Thanks, I got that," I muttered. Then something else hit me.

"Honeybear?!" I asked incredulously

"Sweetie pie," she said seriously. I stared at her in concern.

"Pookie pop."

" _Pookie?"_ I demanded.

She laughed a little, her shoulder shaking silently, barely keeping a straight face.

"Pookie?" I demanded again.

"Ok, ok, I'll stop," she said, getting more serious, though her lips were still quirking. I knew I had already told her about the incident when Layla had called me "cutie," and she had always found that hilarious.

She wasn't laughing about the situation, but from the sheer relief that she had managed to pull this off so far. It was release, pure and simple. Otherwise I might have been seriously concerned for her sanity.

I just shook my head and pulled on my clothes. I kept the super-suit on under my clothes, but threw the gauntlets and helmet into a bag. I had a suspicion I'd be needing the armor sooner rather than later. I was about to walk into a snake pit, and I was going to need every advantage I could get.

"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head as I walked back into view. "I'm standing here making jokes…"

"You can only be scared for so long," I said with understanding, getting into the passenger's side. People sometimes had weird reactions to stress; I had seen the gang do a lot of strange things after tough fights. Some of them might have even been stress-related.

You could only sustain terror for so long. Eventually it wore thin, and you had to do, or feel, anything else. It was probably a good thing she had chosen humor rather than one of my typical stress-relievers: those usually ended up with something being reduced to ashes.

"I think I've heard too many stories about your friends," she said. I had often entertained her with some of Zack's antics or Will's gaffs, just to try to make her smile sometimes.

"You could do a lot worse. Come on, like you said, the sooner we get there…"

Nodding silently, Monica got us on the road. We drove in silence for several long minutes, and I kept looking over my shoulder as the ghost town disappeared behind us.

"They're going to hate me," I said finally, giving voice to one of my fears.

"I doubt it," she responded. "They're a hell of a lot better friends than I ever had."

She was right, and I knew it, but I didn't want to say anything else aloud about my fears right now.

_Mom, I'm sorry. I hope you know why I'm doing this._

I could very easily destroy Mom's reputation by doing this. Would she understand? Would she try to reach me? Would she just sink into despair? The thought of Mom weeping on the floor of her room, like she had when I was younger, almost made me ask Monica to stop the car. She had worked so damn hard to pull herself together, and I was risking all of that by doing this.

Zack probably wouldn't spare me once he woke up. Even if my mom had taken care of him at one point, he didn't always think things through. His anger at Monica could just be more fuel to the fire.

And Will… what would he be going through? Will had never had any reason to doubt me; and he'd probably be defending me before all the other superheroes with only half the facts. It'd make him look naïve and foolish, not to mention just plain moronic. I hated the thought of doing that to him.

He'd been plenty supportive, all of them had, but Will had done it without reservation or ulterior motive. Even that time we had fought in the cafeteria, one of the first things he had tried to do afterward was to make amends. Layla had been the first one to be nice to me, but Layla was nice to everyone and everything. I had just tried to kill Will when he had first extended his hand in friendship. I hadn't taken it at the time, but he had at least tried.

_Dammit. This isn't fucking fair._

"Ok," I said after a second, letting out a long sigh. "What's going to happen? What's the plan?"

"I'll get you in, you'll go and see the psychic on duty so she can look you over. If she says you're ok, then they'll get you down to the infirmary so you can heal up the latest crop of injured."

"Who's the psychic going to be, do you know?"

"We'll probably get there after midnight, and Psion has night duty. I'm pretty sure she'll try to lean on you as hard as she can, but she's been doing the low-level stuff so long, I'm not even sure if she _can_ do an individual mind scan anymore," Monica said, glancing at me sideways.

"We can't count on that," I said, trying to ward off the thrill of fear that ran through me. We almost had to count on this Psion person to be borderline incompetent, and that was extremely dangerous.

"I know, so just concentrate very hard on the truth, the version of the truth you want her to know. Three quarters of what you want to accomplish they won't care about, as long as they think you haven't subverted me. I have to seem to be in control of you at all times. That's the only way they'll let you have free run around the academy. Everywhere you go, I have to go, and everywhere I go, you'll have to come too. Otherwise they'll ban you from my workroom."

Since that was the crux of the plan, that I had to be in the room when Monica hauled people out of class, or wherever, I nodded in acquiescence.

"You want me to act like I was before?" I asked. The idea itself was sound, but I wasn't sure how long I could keep up a "meek" façade before cracking. If someone as sadistic as Cutter tried something, sooner or later I'd snap, I knew I would. My self-control was a lot better now than it was in high school, but I still had a temper.

"To an extent. Look, they honestly don't care if I tortured you into submission or seduced you, just as long as I seem to be in control. But inside the workroom, it has to be the other way around. Outside, if I say jump-."

"I ask 'how high?' But inside, you do what I tell you?" This was going to be a very twisted trip.

"That's the only way they'll believe you're for real. Being one of the school torturers put me in a position of power. And with… everything I put the students through, they might want to prove to themselves they don't have to be scared of me anymore. I'm willing to take some hits if I have to," she said, her tone very even and measured. It had the ring of a long-used argument, like something she had been convincing herself of for a long time.

It hit me, at a deeper level, what really was going on. For the first time since I had really known Monica, I was going to see her in her "home environment." At the academy she was feared and obeyed; she had power. In the superhero world she had no respect and no power, and wasn't likely to get either for a very long time, if ever. And now she was willing to take hits, probably literal ones, in order to make this work. I damn sure wasn't going to let her _get_ hit, but I was really proud of her right then for facing it squarely.

"You don't have to," I said quickly.

"Thanks." She smiled slightly before a more businesslike expression dropped into place.

"You realize one of the people you're going to heal is Bruin, right?"

That had occurred to me, and I didn't really like it.

"Look, I really don't like these people that much-."

"Think of them like you do the car-wreck victims in Maxville. You don't know them either, but you do ok there."

"Because I know they haven't ripped open people I care about!"

"This is the price of admission Warren! If you don't heal, they'll kill you to deny your resources to the opposition. And then they'll kill me, just for wasting their time," she said sharply.

I set my jaw while I thought that over, and nodded reluctantly. If I just thought of them as the innumerable victims of car wrecks, accidents, house fires, or other things I had healed as an EMT over the past few years, I thought I could handle it. I damn well knew some of those car wreck victims had been drinking or high, and some of those people who had had "accidents" were really nothing of the sort. But since I hadn't exactly seen it happen, it hadn't been hard to override my own reluctance in the face of their injuries.

 _Same stuff, but different setting,_ I told myself firmly. The threat of death helped too.

Monica spent the rest of the hours-long drive explaining everything she could about the academy, everything she had been reluctant to tell me for the past few years. Information that was only useful to those inside it, but with no way to disguise its origin in order to get it to the spies, knowing it would have just been a torment. I understood why she hadn't told me, but the temperature spiked in the car a few times while she was talking.

"I didn't know that the spies were dead until Judge Libra told you," she said at one point. "I'll find out where…" She trailed off, and I saw her knuckles tighten on the wheel. Where their bodies where, was what she meant to say, but she hated to say it out loud.

That, horrible as it was, was low on the list of priorities. Those people were safely dead, and nothing else could hurt them now. But there were people living inside the academy that needed help first. Monica had a mental list of people whom she thought we could turn to our side, or at least, away from the academy.

"I can't tell you the list right now, I'm sorry. I don't have any physical evidence of those people in my possession, and I don't want to start now. What you don't know, Psion can't find out."

"But it's been what, three years since you were last here? Are you sure some of these people haven't gone totally over the edge by now?" I asked with some trepidation. Monica shook her head.

"I was recalled a week before the Crew hit Maxville. I went back long enough to double-check my list. I had to change it; some people…" she trailed off and then nodded sadly. "There're still plenty of people who really have no interest in being villains, but since they've been sucked in, they just go with it. None of them are angels, but at worst they might have been bullies or just your garden-variety jerks, not supervillains."

Get them free of the ties the academy had on them, and they'd split. That's all we needed really, for them to just run from the battlefield. I nodded as Monica elaborated on the real lynchpin of our plan, the technopaths that maintained the academy's defense systems.

"There are ten of those technopaths, and none of them are particularly powerful," she explained. I raised an eyebrow at that.

"I thought technopathy was kind of rare."

"Royal Pain was _scouring_ the world for people like them. She set up the major systems herself, but these guys do all the maintenance and updating. They're IT professionals; that's what most of them did before they came here anyway. They're hackers and computer geeks, programmers and coders. But the systems _here_ only work if you can manipulate some of them mentally. They have all the override codes, and they know the systems inside and out. As long as we can get at least six of them on our side, we're good."

"You're sure we can get six?"

"Two grew up heavily influenced by their supervillain parents, so I know we shouldn't even try for them. Two had supervillain parents, but they were never around, and four others had supervillain relatives, but they grew up more or less normal. The last two are first-generation powers. So there are eight people we can try for, at best."

A slim margin, but better than none. The subtext of her comments I ignored completely; she wasn't even talking about me at all. If my dad had been out of jail after I was born, I might have grown up a lot differently, and there was no getting around that. I gave myself a mental shake and asked a more pertinent question.

"Can anyone override their controls on the systems?" I asked.

Monica hesitated.

"The Headmaster, that's it. Otherwise it would take more than half of them working in concert to override another's command."

That brought up a whole other conversation. Headmaster? For years I had been assuming some members of Royal Pain's family had been running the academy… or something. The Bureau's reports on the academy's power structure had been a little vague, now that I looked back on it.

"Who the hell is the Headmaster?"

"He runs the academy. Royal Pain couldn't be bothered with administrative details; she had a Grand Plot to carry out," Monica said with a raised eyebrow that capitalized the words perfectly. "He always did all the logistics that came with actually keeping the place going. Not too long after Royal Pain recruited Cutter, me, and the others in the first class, she went off to Sky High. We didn't see her except for special occasions. The Headmaster has been running the academy since before I even got there."

"Great, someone else to worry about," I muttered. "Why didn't you say anything about him before now?"

"Warren, we're up against the students and physical plant of the academy, just for starters. I don't think we should be thinking about taking down the Headmaster while we're still inside! Let the superheroes deal with him when they get here; we're going to have enough to do as it is."

Unfortunately I couldn't argue with that. Actually I could, and did, for several minutes, but Monica kept coming up with better arguments. The only things I learned, the only things that Monica knew, were that the Headmaster always went around in full costume, rarely appeared in public, and no one knew exactly what his powers were. Going against a complete unknown like that would have been really dumb. And honestly, if our plan got any more complicated, my brain was going to explode.

It was a long drive, and the sun had finally set by the time we arrived. The land had been getting more mountainous as we got closer and closer to the Rockies, and eventually Monica steered her car onto a seemingly little-used track, punched in a security code to get her through a locked gate, and parked in an underground parking garage. I knew the academy was underground, but this looked like it had been blasted into the side of a mountain.

"This looks like a military base," I muttered as I got out.

"I'm pretty sure it was, at one point, but that's just one of the questions you don't ask around here."

She led me through a heavy metal door, opening it with her palm print, retinal scan, voice identification, password, sixteen digit security code, face comparison, and DNA blood test, identifying me only by face and voice.

 _Damn, the Bureau doesn't have security that tight,_ I thought. Getting into this place quickly was not going to be easy. Not surprisingly, it reminded me strongly of Royal Pain's stuff the Bureau had removed from my mom's house before we moved in.

That rigmarole done, she quickly guided me through the dim maze of corridors and staircases. The place was cool and damp, about what you'd expect from a place carved into solid rock, and atrociously lit. There were very few signs as to where things were, which Monica had told me was deliberate.

"Get lost, end up somewhere where you aren't supposed to be, you won't make the same mistake twice. You don't get second chances in the field." That, it seemed, was the academy's prevailing philosophy: No Second Chances. Considering what had happened to Royal Pain, that wasn't too surprising.

As she led me downward, deeper into the academy, I was hyper-vigilant. She had warned me that the halls were a no-man's-land, and getting picked off by some punk looking for an easy mark just because I had let my guard down would have been especially ridiculous. I could hear occasional whispers and muffled conversations behind closed doors or down darkened corridors as we walked. People cracked the doors to look at us as we went by, and whispers picked up after we passed. I heard the occasional cry echo off the stone corridors, though if it was in pain or madness or something else, I couldn't really tell.

Royal Pain couldn't have chosen a more perfect and deliberate contrast to Sky High. Two minutes here and I was ready to leave.

We were getting deeper and deeper, and I was already tense enough to have a headache by the time Monica got us to a simple door inscribed with three eyes arranged in a triangle.

"Behave," she said in a kind of growling undertone, and she assumed an impassive mien. I put the mental image of my firewalls firmly in place, gave her a short nod, and she opened the door.

Inside the room was small, dim, and cool, but contained nothing stranger than a large desk and three chairs. And Psion, sitting behind the desk, her palms flat on its surface. She was strange all on her own. She looked normal enough at first glance, a little pale, average height, her dark blonde hair tied back severely, and she was almost skeletally thin. It was her eyes that creeped me out though; they were huge, violet, and flickering rapidly in all directions. It made me dizzy just to look at her.

"I brought him, Psion," Monica announced, her voice flat and businesslike.

"Good, good. You did well, something to show for all that work," Psion whispered. Monica only shrugged, as if being on her own for three years was of no consequence.

Psion wasn't looking directly at me, instead her lead lolled to the side as her eyes spun wildly in her sockets. I didn't feel any mental pressure from her, yet, and just concentrated very hard on what I needed her to know.

"So you… Phoenix. You will stay. Will you work?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked tightly. "It was either this or see my friends die in front of me."

"You could have rescued them," Psion said in her wispy voice. "You heroes are good at that."

"Yeah, maybe I could have," I said belligerently, crossing my arms. I hesitated a long moment before speaking again. "But I'd have been trading one cage for another."

"Ah yes… we just got to you first. We heard Egret was going to offer you… but you already knew what you wanted. So, you'll do it."

"I hate this place. You're all a bunch of psychos," I said flatly. There was no heat in my accusations; I didn't need it. She could have heard the same response from nearly any superhero. This was just a plain statement of fact.

"But…?" Psion trailed her question off, a raised brow over her dancing eyes asking for further explanation.

"The Bureau doesn't want me to fight anymore, they just want me to heal. The Judge said I had to heal here, but he didn't say I couldn't fight."

Psion threw her head back and laughed; it wasn't a particularly sane sound.

"So you'll fight us even as you heal us?"

"If that's what it takes to make sure my friends are safe, then yeah," I said.

"That's rather sadistic… I like it. Maybe you'll come around to our point of view after a while. We have quite a lot to offer," she said pleasantly.

"Doubt that," I muttered.

"We are exhausted by our efforts. You'll find a lot of wounded here to tend to. Trust me, we're worse off than you."

Something tickled at the corner of my mind, seeking entrance. Psion's left eye had fixed squarely on me even as her right continued to spin. I let the mental flames rage, putting twenty-one years' worth of stubbornness behind them. Psion jerked slightly, and for a minute I thought I could see fire reflected in her eyes.

"We're not so bad, once you get to know us. Besides, there are benefits to being here. Painbreaker has shown you some, I'm sure. Indestructibles don't really feel a whole lot in the way of pain, so that must have been pretty interesting for you, eh?"

The leer she tossed both of us made me want to punch her in the face.

Monica only smiled lazily and put her arm around my waist in a possessive gesture.

"He got used to it pretty quickly," she said, sounding satisfied, and then jammed her fingers into my hip. She had put her finger knives on the first two fingers of each hand as soon as we had got to the academy, so she stabbed right through the denim and into my skin, invoking her powers briefly as she went. The bolt of pain was brief, and I suppressed a yell with some effort.

Psion's eyes suddenly both stilled, and the mental pressure became nearly unbearable. For some reason, I began to feel really confident, almost giddy, as if I could take on the world single-handedly, and I _knew_ , right then, that Psion couldn't do anything to me. The pain-bolt Monica had shot through me, combined with my own walls, definitely would have helped override her mind-reading attempts. I was the best of the Champions at keeping up my mental walls, and I would burn anyone who dared to try them.

I noticed Psion was smiling at us, and the mental pressure suddenly let up with an almost audible snap.

"That will do. Put him to work Painbreaker, and keep him out of trouble."

_What the hell? That was weird…_

Monica nodded again, and guided me out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her. She only tossed me a brief apologetic look, and I nodded slightly in understanding. She began striding down stairs and through the maze of corridors at a rapid pace, head turning quickly to look for ambush. I saw occasional shadows lurking down the corridors, silhouettes of other academy supervillains, but they kept their distance.

"How many do you think you're good for?" Monica asked quietly as we walked. "Injuries, I mean."

"Healing? Um…" I tried to gauge myself carefully. I hadn't gotten a good night's sleep, but I hadn't really had to use my powers in over a day either. All in all, other than being tired, I wasn't too bad off.

"Depends how bad they're hurt, but maybe half a dozen?" That was about the max I could handle, if they were badly hurt. I had accidentally proven that to myself when we had helped transport car-wreck victims to the hospitals during an ice storm that had nearly crippled Maxville about a year ago. I almost burned myself out entirely that day.

Monica nodded in comprehension and then drew herself up short at another intersection.

"Flame that wall," she whispered abruptly. I raised an eyebrow at that. "It's a permanent holographic projection. Favorite ambush site since day one."

A look convinced me she wasn't kidding.

"This place just gets better and better," I muttered, powering up and strafing the wall. A muffled yell sounded from behind it, and then a startled red-haired guy stepped out of the solid-seeming hologram. He caught sight of us and raised a wire-wrapped baseball bat aggressively.

"Nice shot Matchstick. Wanna try again?" he asked mockingly.

 _Are you kidding me?_ I thought. Monica gave a little jerk with her chin, pointing at the guy and raising her eyebrows. He was all mine to deal with. The redhead shifted the bat on his shoulders slightly, and I scowled at him harshly. _Jerkwad. Going to smash someone in the back with a damn baseball bat?_

"One, that was a lame quip," I said dangerously, taking a half step forward, letting the flames burn along my hands and forearms. "Two, you're in my range, but I'm not in yours. Three, you're outnumbered."

The redhead was starting to look more and more uncertain

"Four, you're annoying me. Go to bed, Bat Boy," Monica added, stepping out from behind me. He went scarlet with anger, and then suddenly blanched.

"You!" he said, startled, and then looked closer at both of us. He quickly slinked away.

"I hope to hell he spreads the word that I'm back before tomorrow. I don't want to have to reestablish my reputation," she said quietly as we moved past the holographic wall. The corridors and doors got a little wider and farther apart, but no less maze-like. I was tempted to start leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

"I wouldn't want you to either," I said softly, trying to memorize my way back to the exterior door. I lost myself somewhere around the eighth intersection.

"Most people know me well enough by the horror stories… it's the new ones I'm worried about, but the older kids should straighten them out soon enough. We're here," she said abruptly, pushing open a large door painted a nauseatingly bright and cheery shade of green.

The antiseptic smell proclaimed it the infirmary before I had even gotten inside. It didn't look too different from a hospital, save the doors had exterior locks, and the beds I saw all had restraints. That didn't make me feel any better about this at all.

Monica abruptly pulled me into an empty room and shut the thick door before anyone could see us.

"Are you ok?" she asked seriously, holding my head in her hands so she could look me in the eyes.

"Yeah, so far, all things considered," I quipped. I was in the bowels of a supervillain academy, had been mind-probed by a crazy psychic, had intimidated a violent bully into backing off, was about to try to heal some villains that would try to hurt people I knew, and my girlfriend had just implied I was the M to her S so my capture would seem more palatable to the teachers here. _Other than that, I'm doing just peachy, thanks for asking._

"Was Psion trying something on you? She usually looks that way when she's really concentrating hard."

"I really don't know," I said honestly, shaking my head. The few times psychics at school had broken through my walls, there had been a definite sensation of "breaking" that at least let me know what had happened, even if I couldn't do a whole lot by then. On the other hand, Judge Libra had gotten past my mental walls without even really trying.

Monica shook her head, seeming to dismiss the problem.

"If she knew what we were really up to, she would have fried your brain before you left the office. Whatever she got, she doesn't think it can hurt the academy. I'm supposed to be making you willing to give over your allegiance, not just be holding your leash."

I had a very unfortunate mental image right then, and quickly pummeled it into a pulp and put it in a corner. Now was _not_ the time.

"Ok, so why are we in this room?"

"I needed to talk to you about Bruin."

"No cameras here?" I had tried to keep everything I did in public looking like it was according to her plan, and kept everything I said very quiet under that exact assumption. A place like this, founded by a technopath, a former military base, surely would have them in spades...

Monica looked at me oddly, as if I had just missed something very obvious.

"Warren, the only rooms that have surveillance are the cafeteria and gymnasium. Believe me, I've checked."

"Why the hell not? Royal Pain used surveillance all the time; Will told me how she got a camera into his dad's Sanctum-."

"Warren, why would the hallways be a no-man's-land if students could use the cameras to prove other students were beating on them? What goes on the public areas is brutal, but if you can give real evidence to the teachers of someone jumping you in the halls, the punishments are even worse. Most people can't get that evidence, so they learn to be clever or powerful or scary so they can get through the days. That's the whole damn point. There's no fucking consequences for what goes on in here, and no evidence of what happened!" she said, her voice low and intense.

I counted to ten slowly, enforcing the mental image of a raging fire slowly retracting behind a safe ring of stones, bringing my temper back under control. It wasn't her fault, it wasn't her fault I was angry. Every new thing I learned about the academy was like turning over a rock and finding all kinds of nasty creepy-crawlers.

"Ok," I said finally, "What about Bruin? Is he on your list?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Most people don't come here unless someone orders them, or they're just too messed up to fight. And I really don't have a reason to haul Bruin down to my workroom; he pretty much does what he's told, no matter what."

"There's a but." I actually had multiple objections to helping the guy, no matter the plan, but I'd listen first.

"But," she added, nodding, "he was terrified when he first came here. He's first generation, and he honestly has no idea how he got his powers. He told me he was living the American dream, the first person in his family to go to college. He's supporting his parents, and helping his little sister through school with his salary. And he's absolutely terrified they'll learn what he's doing when he's not at his job."

"He's a park ranger, right?"

Monica looked startled.

"How the hell did you know that?" she demanded. I almost laughed at the expression on her face, being this was the first time I had one-uped her on supervillain knowledge, but she looked so flatly astonished at my knowledge that I quickly clarified.

"The day after we fought you for the first time, Principle Powers sent us to Yellowstone to get us away from our parents while she was explaining things. Bruin was the ranger that checked us in and out. He was completely freaked out, and didn't want to fight, and said he wouldn't tell anyone."

"He didn't, he never said anything about that. Son of a bitch," Monica said, admiration in her tone.

"When we left, he said, 'We didn't all want this.' I really wasn't buying it though. I didn't think anyone could make him do anything he didn't want to."

"Royal Pain did. Bruin… before she even found him, he had killed four poachers in the park. He used his powers to find them, and then killed them because he couldn't have brought them to justice. She made him a deal: work for her, or she told his family and the Bureau."

The Bureau took an extremely dim view of those who used their powers to kill, even in extreme situations. I couldn't say I sympathized with the guy, but I thought I understood him a little. Now, with everything else he had been doing, he was pretty much stuck as a villain.

It didn't justify jack squat, but it explained why he might be on the list in the first place.

"I can't believe he kept meeting you a secret all this time," Monica muttered in amazement. She suddenly sighed. "What do you think? This place is almost as secure as my workroom and, considering how much he dislikes me, this could be the only time we're going to get him alone in a room with you."

"When was the last time he disobeyed orders?" I asked her in turn. Monica shook her head sadly, and I took that to mean "never."

"The only reason he didn't manage to rip Layla apart a few days ago was because Will and I got back just in time," I said tightly. The majority of the other villains here I didn't know well enough to hate. Bruin's work I knew pretty damn well.

"Price of admission Warren. Right now he's just a guy in pain."

I snarled silently, knowing Monica had played just the right card. I knew I was going to have to do this, but I was doing it under protest.

"You think you can help him?"

"You fucking know I can," I growled.

Monica's chin came up in defiance of my attitude, and she made her final argument.

"He thinks he's pretty much sunk to the bottom. You can show him he can still look up."

My head was starting to hurt. I almost missed guys like Judge Libra and Hammerfist, straightforward evil villains out for loot or a power trip. All this ambiguity made me uncertain and nervous, as well as angry. It wouldn't take much to screw up.

I nodded, and Monica prodded me back out into the hall.

"Come on, get to work," she growled impatiently, for the benefit of anyone who was listening.

I set my jaw, preparing myself for the unpleasantness to come as Monica led me past the other rooms. She indicated briefly which ones were occupied, shaking her head slightly at the doors to show me none of these others were on the list.

The list itself, as Monica had told me during the car ride, was mostly of henchmen and low-level villains, along with a few others who had stronger ties outside the academy than inside.

"We're going to be doing the Fight Club scenario," she had explained. "Most of the really strong villains like the system, because it gives them power. We're going after the downtrodden, those that really weren't gung ho about this in the first place. If you took every janitor, cab driver, secretary, clerk, and cashier out of the real world, the whole place would collapse. Same thing here. We turn as many of the support personnel as we can-."

"And the house of cards collapses," I had finished.

I glanced in each of the rooms as we went by. There were only five people here, including Bruin, most of them with major injuries too severe to deal with on their own. Broken bones or major gashes: really, nothing I didn't think I could handle. And most of them were thankfully not in their costumes. If they kept their damn mouths shut, I could just pretend they were some unfortunate citizens, caught in an accident.

_I've just got to keep telling myself that…_

Bruin's room was at the end of the hall, and barred from the outside. No one was around to ask questions, and I wondered how often the academy's medical staff checked on them. With everything else they were concentrating on, clearly attention to the wounded had suffered. No wonder they wanted me!

 _That and it's a lot simpler to use me instead of providing their students with good medical care. Bastards,_ I thought darkly.

Bruin was just lying in his bed in the tiny, barren room, the bandages around his head and face oozing blood. He was damn lucky he hadn't managed to claw his own eye out, considering how frantic he had been to pry Ethan off of him.

His eyes flickered open weakly at the sound of the door, and abruptly widened when he saw who it was. He slammed himself backwards at the bed, yelling something virtually incomprehensible due to the ravaged state of his mouth and jaw.

"Bruin," Monica said softly, and he fell instantly silent. "You remember Phoenix, don't you?"

The dead tone of voice she was using was mildly disturbing. Bruin nodded a little, eyes still wide and terrified. This was not how I was used to healing people, the whole setting not withstanding. The few times I had used my powers on fellow superheroes, they were either unconscious or at least willing. The citizens I had healed were usually unconscious from the pain or the drugs we gave them, or in shock. I had never healed a reluctant person before, and I wasn't sure if I could.

Right now Bruin looked more pathetic and even sympathetic than anything else. He definitely didn't look cruel or psychotic, more like a whipped puppy expecting another beating. Suddenly it wasn't too hard to think of him as just another car-wreck victim.

Bruin nodded his head reluctantly at Monica's words, still deeply afraid.

"He's here because I did _my_ job and got the academy an asset. Now stop cringing and let him work, unless you want to try to explain to your superiors at the park how you got mauled by a bear."

Bruin stopped cowering against the wall and let me approach, though he kept a wary eye on Monica. Remembering her words from earlier that day, I caught her eye.

"Wait outside," I said firmly. Monica nodded once and left.

If Bruin had been capable of moving his jaw, I might have had to pick it up off the floor, he was so surprised.

"'ou can tell her 'hat to do?" he asked incredulously, not moving his lips.

"Yeah," I said simply, mentally relaxing myself. _Just another car-wreck victim Peace, just another Saturday night accident, that's all this is…_

Images of the heroes he had maimed, of the claw marks on Layla suddenly flashed through my mind, and the fire ignited along my hands, lethally orange and gold.

Bruin stared at me, his face a blank mask of fear under the bandages, passively waiting for whatever was going to happen.

 _He always obeys orders, always,_ I reminded myself, and suddenly got an idea. I didn't want to have a serious discussion with him in here; people coming out of Monica's workroom were almost expected to be emotionally distraught, a hard fact we needed in order to cover up what we were going to ask some of these people to do, but I couldn't have the infirmary patients walk out of here screaming. Actually, I didn't want anyone to walk out of anywhere screaming, but particularly not here. They'd be keeping an eye on those I healed, so I had to be more careful with these guys.

"I put your face back together, you do me a favor," I said. Bruin nodded warily, seeming to accept that without a qualm. Favors were excellent currency in the academy. "When I tell you to run, I need you to run away, no questions, no hesitation."

Bruin blinked at me in confusion.

"Dat's it?" he asked, his eyes pale in the reflection of the flames.

"Just as long as you do it, then yeah, that's it." Bruin thought that over for a minute, then nodded again.

"Deal." It said volumes that he didn't ask for clarification. Curiosity had been beaten out of him long ago. I honestly couldn't hate him right now, even though I knew what he had done.

The fire slowly darkened to red and contracted down on my hands, and now I could actually tell something was wrong with him. He wasn't in immediate danger of dying, not unless infection set in, but he wasn't going to heal up very well either.

I took a few steps forward and brought my hands up to touch his temples. I knew very well that Bruin was a lot taller and bigger than me, even without his powers, but he was curled up so he looked no bigger than Ethan. He was broken, in a hell of a lot more ways than one.

"It's going to feel hot," I warned him. "When it gets painful, push me away, or I'll burn you by accident."

"'k," Bruin muttered, not meeting my eyes.

_He's expecting pain; he's honestly expecting me just to cauterize this or something._

_**Bastards.** _

Three breaths and I could see his life fire, not nearly as bad off as some people I had seen, but shot through with jagged shadows from his injuries. And even more prominent were the elaborate smooth black bands and knots of the power meddling the academy had done to him, which made him feel he _had_ to use his powers. Something like this probably existed in his mind as well, but I could only handle the physical. For everything else him, and the rest of the academy students, needed someone like my mom, or a good shrink, or maybe just a few years away from this place. I could only hope that with the physical restrictions gone, they'd all be able to help themselves.

_This is really fucked up._

The shadows slowly began to clear away as I let the fire flow, my mind fixed on the ugly black knot holding the constraints on Bruin's powers. I'm sure my mom would carefully pick something like that apart and figure out what exactly had caused everything, but I neither had the time nor the patience. Like with Monica, I took Alexander's solution and cut the Gordian knot. Switching my mental image to something like a sword, I slashed at the damn thing, and suddenly was slammed against a wall and jolted rudely out of my trance.

I blinked hard to bring my focus back into the real world, roaring echoing in my ears. Bruin, shifted and standing on his hind legs, was sidling from foot to foot in the opposite corner, paws the size of dinner plates and claws like knives slicing through the air.

I got myself back on my feet in a flash, letting the orange flames engulf my arms.

_Come on Bruin, don't fucking do it…_

I was _not_ used to people I had healed coming after me with murderous intent, and it was seriously weirding me out.

Bruin snorted once, twice, and shifted back, pulling the bandages off his face. I took a pardonable amount of pride in the fact that he barely had a trace of a scar.

_I'm definitely getting better at this._

"What the hell did you do?" he asked incredulously. "That wasn't just my face, I know it. It felt like you lit a fire in my damn blood!"

"You remember what you promised?" I asked instead of answering. Bruin nodded. "Then consider that a free gift."

"What _was_ that?" he asked again.

 _Bruin always does what he's ordered,_ I reminded myself, and shook my head at him. He was part of the Crew, too close to Cutter, and that made him too dangerous to trust with everything. The others on the list, though I didn't know their names, weren't nearly as prominent in the eyes of the academy. They wouldn't be questioned; Bruin would be.

And so what if I told him to run away? That didn't mean squat, it only meant I was trying to screw around with the academy, fighting them like I told them I was, even if it was only in a half-hearted way. That would be what they would expect with Painbreaker "controlling" me. Anything further would give us both away.

"Go," I said firmly. Bruin kept his eyes on me as he sidled out of the room, and finally ran down the hall and out the door. I closed my eyes for a second and swallowed hard, trying to get myself calm again. I wasn't used to people I had healed running away from me.

Monica stuck her head in the room when I didn't come out, and looked at me with concern.

"There are four others in here, two broken legs, one crushed arm, and one with a half-dozen badly broken ribs. I already told them that they aren't allowed to talk to you," she said softly. That was wise; if they made any quips about superheroes, I would probably end up scorching someone badly.

Three more deep breaths and I was ready.

"Let's do this."

Three of them went fine, because they kept their mouths shut. Each of them was left overheated and a little sunburned because Monica was a bit slow pulling me away from them, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to feel too bad about it. Each person I was healing was now leaving mission-capable, able to hurt people I knew. I had to very fiercely keep my mind on what we were going to do, not what was happening now. I had to establish my credentials, and Monica had to reaffirm hers. This was the price of admission.

The last guy, the one with the crushed arm, didn't go well at all. I didn't recognize him, but he definitely knew me.

"Fire birdy! You think you can make me fly again?" he asked cheerfully. The guy was short, with pale skin and dark hair, wearing the remnants of a red and orange costume.

"What did I tell you about speaking, Ash?" Monica asked darkly. Ash lost of a little of his cheer.

"Hey, just thought he'd like a nice welcome," he muttered. "He could use a friend, considering all three of his little shapeshifted buddies bit it last week."

Fire flared without conscious effort as my temper mounted. _Joking about the dead? Fucking sicko!_ Monica stepped in between us and suddenly slapped Ash in the face, darkness dimming the room as she invoked her powers on him at the same time.

His face lost all color and he gave a strangled gasp when Monica finally powered down. He panted hard, color slowly returning to his face while I got control back. It hadn't taken much, Monica's brutal enforcement of her rules was like a bucket of cold water, but Ash's throwaway comment was just as shocking.

He had said all _three_ , all _three_ shapeshifted buddies. Three spies. The Bureau had sent _five_ , three shapeshifters and two with mental powers. That meant two other allies were still on the loose down here!

"I don't appreciate people flaunting my rules. I said no one talks to Phoenix while he works, and you had to go and test that right away, didn't you?" Monica continued, right over my own revelations. Ash tried to shrug casually with one shoulder, keeping his busted arm very still.

"You do not disobey me, particularly when I come bearing gifts for you. I think you know what that means," she hissed. Ash's eyes went wide and he tried to slide off the side of his bed. He didn't get very far before Monica slammed her finger-knives into his stomach, right through the rips in his armor, and the air darkened with her powers.

Ash couldn't even scream as the air popped and crackled around him. His body went rigid, and his mouth opened in silent agony. I took a half-step forward in instinctual protest, but Monica turned to look at me, and her eyes were black with hatred and self-loathing. I froze in place, clenching my fists in helplessness. It went on for a full ten agonizing seconds before she stopped.

"Phoenix, patch him up," she said in a very calm tone of voice, stepping away from Ash. He was unconscious from the assault, and I had absolutely no problem helping him now. Burning away the shadows from his crushed arm was only a tiny way of compensating for his "punishment." When Monica pulled me back from him, I almost jerked away from her touch. Almost. If I hadn't seen her blinking away tears, I would have.

"You're done for tonight, let's go," she said simply.

_I cannot fucking believe that just happened._

_Oh really? What did you think she was going to do? How did you think she was going to behave? He who walks amongst jackals dares show no weakness._

_She doesn't have to be a jackal herself!_

_She was the damn Jackal Queen and you know it. She_ needs _to be Painbreaker here, and she can't have you pulling her back from what she needs to do, or they will tear her apart._

This _will tear her apart all on its own._

_So? Do something about it Hotshot!_

Monica led the way to her room in complete silence, the ever-present faint cries and whispers of the darkened corridors the only sounds around us. No one even passed us in the halls; it felt like we had some kind of disease, that anyone who got to close would risk catching something.

She unlocked her door and led me inside, locking it again immediately and flipping on the lights. Then she ran for the bathroom.

I hesitated a half-second before going after her, but no longer than that. Somehow her clutching the toilet bowl and puking her guts out put a lot of my fears to rest. That, perhaps, was the least messed-up part of this whole trip.

I knelt on the floor with her, holding her hair back while she tried to purge her conscience as much as she was purging her body, and then held her again when she collapsed against me, crying silently. She didn't say anything for almost an hour, finally got up, cleaned herself off, and went back into the other room.

The room wasn't much better than an average motel: attached bathroom to a single bedroom with a couch, table, chair, nightstand, TV, and bed. One bed. And a small one at that. I'd worry about that later.

"God," Monica whispered finally, lifting her face from her hands. "I haven't done that in years."

I didn't ask whether she meant the torture part or the puking part.

"And I'm going to do it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until we get done what we came here to do," she said more firmly. "It'll be easier tomorrow; there aren't any smart-asses on my list. No one's going to talk back to me, I promise you that."

I didn't say anything yet, just sat down next to her on the bed and put one arm around her. What was I supposed to say? We'd already discussed most of it to death in the car this morning. It was just a hell of a lot harder seeing it in person.

"You told me, when I graduated, that you didn't want me to forget about us. I'm telling you the same thing now," I said. "We're going to get rid of this nightmare, and you're never going to have to relive it again."

It sounded a little cliché to my own ears, but clichés weren't necessarily untrue. Monica seemed to relax a little, and nodded.

"I just… Warren, I _enjoyed_ that," she confessed suddenly. "I haven't been able to use my powers like that in a long time, and I _enjoyed_ it."

 _That_ , I realized, more than just what she had done, had caused the puking fit. I wanted to let her know it was ok, but it wasn't, and we both knew it. I didn't have an answer for something like that right now.

"It's been a long day for both of us," I said after a long minute. "I'll sleep on the couch, ok?"

"Stay with me? I just… just hold me until I fall asleep?" she asked, almost pleading.

_Damn it, I really shouldn't…_

But by now the exhaustion was catching up to me as well. I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours.

"Ok, ok…" I said, and lay down on the bed, intending to prop my eyes open so I could move to the couch as soon as she was out. It really wouldn't be a good idea to be in the same bed; even if we were both so tired we hadn't undressed.

We were both unconscious the second our heads touched the pillow.

* * *

I was dreaming. And I knew I was dreaming, which was really strange. My eyes opened to fire raging around me like the heart of an inferno, words echoing in my head.

_Fire cleanses. Fire purifies. It changes everything it touches. It burns out impurities._

_Fire destroys. Fire sweeps everything away. It renders everything the same. It burns it all to ash._

I was suddenly standing in my own Sanctum, watching fire begin to race over everything, burning the fan letters, the pictures, the newspaper articles, and even my costume. I put out a hand in futile protest, knowing my costume was nearly as fireproof as I was, and knowing also that its destruction had little to do with physical reality.

"Why are you doing this? You're destroying everything, sacrificing everything," a voice whispered, and I turned to see a woman standing, untouched, in the flames. She wore a dress of opalescent gray and had a veil over her hair and face, obscuring her features almost like mist.

"I had to, it was the only way," I said with a kind of stunned calm. "I'm going to stop them."

"You are?" she sounded surprised, and I got the impression of a raised eyebrow behind the veil. "You're turning your back on everyone who loves you."

"No, I'm not."

"Really?" I saw a flash of darkness out of the corner of my eye, and saw, with shocking clarity, Monica bent over the shaking form of Ash, her fingers shoved in his stomach, her powers invoked to bring him crippling pain.

"And she loves you?"

"I love her," I said, knowing, as perhaps this gray woman didn't, the tear-streaked recriminations Monica had gone through once she was alone with me.

"She loves you too, she really does," the woman said, almost sounding surprised.

"Who are you?"

"Why come here? You've suddenly turned your back on everyone."

The words caught in my throat, months of secrets stopping my tongue. I had no idea if I was actually dreaming, or if this was something else.

"It's killing your mother."

The fire around us flared, and I watched in horror as it raced to the Peacemaker's half of the sanctum and began to greedily consume a lifetime's collection of maps, reports, letters, and pictures, leaving her with nothing.

"No!" I yelled and whirled to the gray woman. She stood calmly, unconcerned about the flames.

"It's killing your family."

The flames parted to show my dad's family, all of the Battle family superheroes, engaged in animated discussion in a rapid and loud mixture of German and English I could barely follow.

"I _will not_ allow this to happen again!" Tobias finally roared, overpowering the rest of his children with sheer volume and power. Though old, he radiated authority in such a way that every single one of his children and grandchildren, powerful, successful, and even arrogant superheroes in their own right, gave ground to him.

"We went through this once with Baron, and it's taken us _twenty years_ to repair our family reputation. Whatever Phoenix thinks he's doing, I won't let him drag us down with him!"

The flames swept closed again as I saw all of them nodding solemnly.

"It's killing your fans."

Light flickered, like that of a TV screen, and dozens of images played across the ceiling, interlocking and overlapping crazily.

"-Haven't seen him for days. We need him, where is he?"

"-Always knew he'd go bad, just like that psychotic father of his-."

"Phoenix would never abandon us, would he?"

"Guardian knew he wasn't right in the head after that tangle with Judge Libra, he must have driven him crazy…"

The images faded, and the flames behind me parted to show Will and the rest of the gang with his parents in their Secret Sanctum.

"It's killing your friends."

"He's obviously gone over the edge. It's happened to better heroes than Warren before-," the Commander was trying to say gently.

"He'd _never_ do this on his own! Judge Libra was controlling all of us, what if he did something to Warren?" Will shot back in defiance.

"The director told us, you know how pissed off he was when that chick from the Bureau was talking to him. You heard him man," Zack was saying.

"They were trying to cage him, lock him up for the rest of his life," Magenta chimed in.

"Warren's our friend. How can you say that?" Will demanded, whirling on them.

"Will, everyone has a breaking point. That was _Painbreaker_ with him for we don't know how long," Ethan said, shaking a little.

"He wouldn't-," Will said, and then stumbled to a halt.

"He's our friend, Will," Layla said. "He's our friend, and no matter what… what happened to him, we'll get him back."

"Whatever it takes," the Commander added more forcefully. "Every second Warren is in the academy is another second he can use to-."

"Is being used," Will corrected loudly.

"Is being used against us," the Commander finished. "Do you understand?"

Will finally hung his head as the flames closed again.

Zack was still covering for me, because he knew a little of what I was doing, and Magenta was going along with him. Ethan was being brutally practical, Layla her usually compassionate self… But Will's defense of me in the face of my actions nearly moved me to tears, and I swallowed a lump in my throat. I didn't deserve that kind of loyalty, not with how I was basically _using_ his good nature, manipulating him to get the result I wanted. Even if it was for a good cause.

"Why? Why are you doing this?" the gray woman demanded. The flames raged around us, touching neither.

"I'm freeing them," I said, talking quietly, not meeting her shadowed eyes. "I'm stopping this place from making any more villains."

"At least three people have died as a direct result of trying to infiltrate the academy. That's not counting those that have died from those with academy training, or those that have washed out of the academy and needed to be silenced," she said pitilessly.

"So someone needs to stop it now!" I yelled.

"Why you? Why this way?" she asked quietly.

"Why not me?" I demanded. "I'm a hero, and someone has to stop them. This way some of them actually get a chance to get free."

"This doesn't have to be your fight. You risk the most by being here."

"She's proving herself. I had to before, and she needs to now," I said, staring right through her veil, trying to see into her eyes.

"What if she's too damaged to save? What if all you're doing is in vain?"

"It's not! I can do this!" I nearly screamed at her.

" _Warren!"_ I heard someone calling me, someone not in the dream.

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," the gray lady said firmly, and blackness closed in around me.

* * *

"Warren!" This time I opened my eyes, and I could see Monica shaking my shoulder. I was awake again, for real this time.

"…What?" I asked groggily.

"There's someone at the door asking for you. By name," she said pointedly. That cleared the cobwebs immediately. I had been walking around the academy without a mask, but I hadn't given them my real name yet. I stumbled upright, running my hand through my hair.

"Let 'em in," I said. _Best to keep this contained if we had to do something drastic…_

My heart dropped when I considered exactly what that might be.

Monica waved in a burly young guy, pale-eyed and painfully blonde, his hair cut short, with trembling hands and dark circles under his eyes. He only wore a tank top and jeans, so it was easy to see the multitude of scars all over his arms.

"Warren, thank God it's really you," he said. "I didn't think they'd actually send anyone, not after what happened to the others."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Monica demanded. The guy stared over at her frankly.

"Warren is a good superhero, and he wouldn't be here without a plan. Right?" he asked plaintively.

"Who the hell are you?" I asked harshly.

"Warren it's…" he paused. "Please tell me you have a plan."

"…Yeah," I said hesitantly.

_A half-baked plan engineered by a reformed supervillain with more potential pitfalls than a poorly constructed computer game, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. And I'm not going to tell you specifics, even if you do know my name and aren't scared of Monica._

"It's, I'm-." The guy shuddered all over, his teeth chattering together.

"This is Dallas, he's a medium. He traps other psychics when they use their powers, but his own abilities were so unreliable he's been stuck on duty here as a teaching assistant and living punching bag for years," Monica said flatly.

"That's what made him perfect. We knew no one counted on him, and because of what he was, no one would notice anything strange about him," Dallas said.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Monica asked, raising her bladed hand slightly.

"Please! Don't do that, please, we're just trying to help, we thought we were stuck!" he insisted.

_We? Has this guy just gone bonkers?_

"Start talking," Monica insisted.

"Warren, I know you can't really tell, but it's Elise and Tracy from Sky High," he said. "We've been stuck here for years. Please tell me you have a plan."

Monica and I just looked at each other incredulously.

_What the fuck is going on?_


	44. Inside Job

"How-?" I started, and then shook my head. The mechanics of how there were two people in one body could wait a second. I had a more pressing question.

"How do I know it's really you?"

Dallas took a deep breath, "The first time Psychic Club went up against your group in the Gauntlet, you blinded us, but Robin stole one of your stun rays. Then Ethan tackled her in puddle form and she accidentally shot herself trying to get him off of her."

"And," he added, looking chagrined, "I was a real bitch to you for no good reason."

Since that had been a bit over three years ago, and I barely remembered it, I nodded. It would have been relatively easy to, say, psychically extract a memory I was currently thinking about, if I hadn't been prepared. It would be a hell of a lot harder to pull out something so obscure. And why would Elise/Tracy/Dallas remind me that Elise had been so snappy and unpleasant? That's what convinced me.

"It's them," I said with a nod. Monica lowered her hand slightly and shook her head.

"You must have been really desperate to come here," she said tightly, looking perturbed.

"You have no idea. Seriously."

"How did you get tapped for this job?" I asked. Elise and Tracy were relatively inexperienced to have been asked to do something so dangerous, but it wasn't unheard of.

"Warren, the reason I was being such a bitch to you all at Sky High wasn't just because I was being difficult. I was trying to get myself recruited," he explained.

"Hmm, not a bad plan. But it would have been quite a long shot, considering that Speed, Lash, and Penny defected," Monica said dryly, and Dallas nodded grimly.

"Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly. The director came up with this plan after Mind Mist and the Ghost failed to get in. It took quite a bit of doing, but we managed it."

"Ok, how are there two of you in there?" I asked. Dallas grimaced and grabbed a chair to sit, turning it backwards and folding his arms on the backrest.

"The psychic shields on this place are damn good; good enough that not even Mind Mist and the Ghost could get in," he started. "Their powers work differently from Tracy's though. Ghost can make his whole body incorporeal, and Mind Mist discorporates just her mind. Tracy's power literally works on a whole different plane. That's how we got through the shield."

"Wait, Principal Powers told us that astral projection didn't work," I said warily.

"The Bureau was keeping this operation so far under their hat, I wouldn't be surprised they told her that. The fewer people that know something; the fewer people can spill the beans," Dallas pointed out.

"Back to 'different planar psychic powers.' Neither of us took Advanced Psychic Theory," Monica reminded him. Dallas sighed a little in impatience.

"Psychic powers work on a whole bunch of different levels and planes of brainwaves, like different radio frequencies. The shields here block most of those frequencies. But there are some frequencies that the builders didn't even know existed, and so they didn't try to block them. Tracy's power is so rare they didn't know they _could_ block them. There are probably a few other oddball powers out there that could get through, but not a lot. So I 'rode' in psychically with Tracy through the chink in the shields, and we tried to find an appropriate person to appropriate," he explained.

"Is Dallas still in there?" Monica asked sharply. Elise/Tracy shot her a look of disgust.

"He put himself to sleep. When he found him, he was catatonic, nearly starved to death. This place was pure poison to him, given his powers. With all the psychic interference going on around here, I'm honestly surprised he lasted as long as he did," he explained. "What, you didn't think we _displaced_ him, did you?"

"He's a first-generation power; they're more unstable," Monica said, glaring.

" _You're_ doing well enough," he pointed out acerbically.

"So I'm one of the lucky ones," Monica pointed out with more than a hint of bitterness.

"So you've been borrowing Dallas' body, because he wasn't really using it. Then what?" I asked quickly, before more sparks could fly. Monica wasn't looking particularly happy at the whole situation.

"Tracy controls his body, and I control his mind and memories. We'd gather any information we could, both from observation and from the shapeshifters. Then we'd hop out after we put him to sleep and report; our bodies are in a Bureau hospital nearby."

"Slick system," Monica commented, nodding a bit in appreciation of their craft.

"Yeah, but then the academy started figuring out someone was spying and things got harder. At first the shapeshifters could only meet every few days, and then every week or so. The techs started cycling the shield frequencies too, so it got a lot harder to get in and out. We stopped going out except for every two weeks… Then someone found the shapeshifters." Dallas stumbled to a halt and took another deep breath.

"I don't know how they found them, and I couldn't watch what they did to them, so don't ask. After that, they got more creative with the shields. We haven't been out in two months. And if we leave, we're not sure we can get back in. If that happens, Dallas' body dies."

I stiffened in shock at that.

"He's still catatonic?" I asked.

"Yeah. He needs a really good therapeutic psychic to pry him out of his mental corner, and that's just not my gift. If we leave, he's just going to sit there until he starves."

"Jesus," I whispered.

"Warren, Tracy and I haven't been able to be in our own bodies for more than an hour at a stretch for over two fucking years. Can you get us out? Soon?"

"You know, you're putting an awfully large amount of stock in the fact that he's here to do some good and not just because I hauled him in here for nefarious purposes. I mean, with me being a known supervillain and all," Monica said casually.

"Oh please. Warren would sooner drop himself into the Arctic Ocean than turn supervillain," Dallas said, rolling his eyes. I actually laughed a little at that, albeit nervously, and Monica's lips twitched a bit in a repressed smile.

"You're pretty accurate," I commented guardedly.

"Telepath," Dallas, or rather, Elise said, in a tone that clearly said, "Duh." "The few times I managed to get past your walls in high school I picked up one or two things. That and your actions speak much louder than your thoughts."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You did _everything possible_ aside from getting your DNA changed to distance yourself from Baron Battle. Seriously, it's not that hard to figure out," he pointed out.

_Oh. Right._

"What are people saying out there? Rumors, gossip, eavesdropping, anything," Monica cut in. Dallas shrugged.

"Not much yet, only a few people have seen you back. But the guys you fixed up… they're damn near dancing. They think it's the best thing to happen since they got Jolt cola in the cafeteria."

"Nice to know where I rank up," I muttered.

"I can find out more for you. We have a damn encyclopedia set's worth of information and nobody to give it to-."

"And that'll help, but we don't have that much time," Monica interrupted. "I know you're desperate, but you shouldn't have come here."

"Who else would have? No one else _could_ have!" he snapped.

"I don't mean in here, I mean you shouldn't have come to my door. And we can't get you out of the academy right now; they'd never let you out," Monica pointed out.

Dallas' face fell a mile.

"But maybe we all can," I said encouragingly. "If you help."

"Thank God, you _do_ have a plan."

"We're not going to tell you everything. You're so desperate to get out you violated protocol by coming to my door. Nobody does that, not even the hardcore masochists. You can't leave here without looking like I worked you over," Monica said flatly.

Dallas looked stricken, and I couldn't quite believe my ears. Elise and Tracy had come here looking for help, and they had to get beat up for their trouble?

"I know, I _knew_ that, but we're just so damn tired. We panicked, ok? We just had a freak-out moment…"

"You know, I think there's something you can do right now to help get this done faster. I need you to tell me about the students that have been recruited in the last three years. I know a little about them, but I'm guessing you should know more. Tell me about the reluctant ones, the first generation powers, and the ones people have been pounding on, and _fast_ ," Monica said thoughtfully.

"You're staging an uprising?" Dallas hazarded hopefully.

Monica gave a noncommittal shrug and I glared at her sharply. We had finally found one damn ally in this place and she wasn't going to let him in on anything? That made me uncomfortably aware about how little I knew about the exact details of everything we were doing. This was Monica's show right now. I had half a mind to spill everything I knew, just to give him (or them) a little hope, but one thing stopped me:

The knowledge that three people had already died trying to cross the academy.

How much information was too much for him to know?

"Ok, ok, I get it; the less I know, the less I can say," Dallas sighed, looking resigned. I consciously relaxed a clenched fist before I powered up; he just looked horribly saddened and defeated.

"It'll be soon. That's all I'm going to tell you," Monica said with a hint of encouragement. "Just concentrate on holding yourself together. I'm sorry it has to be this way, but you know how it is down here."

"Yeah… yeah…" Dallas said, rubbing his hands with his arms as if trying to chase away a chill. "All right, here's what I got."

We both listened as Dallas rattled off names, powers, descriptions, personalities, and locations with speed and clarity. Monica seemed to recognize some of the basic information, but Elise and Tracy obviously knew them better. Though they had been stuck here, they had been far from idle.

"No wonder they picked you for this," I said in slight amazement at the sheer volume of information they were spouting off without hesitation or reference to any kind of notes.

"We have one or two talents," Dallas said with a ghost of a grin.

"I don't think we can spare any more time," Monica broke in abruptly. "I'm sorry we have to do this, but I can't send you out there without a scratch. I hope you can make him cry on cue."

"Please. Tracy was a real drama queen. She can get tears out of anyone she ghosts."

"Warren," Monica turned to me. "Scorch him on the arms, shoulders, and neck, like you were holding him down while you were angry. It doesn't have to be serious; it just has to look that way."

I let the heat glow along my hands without even conscious thought. It was logical, practical when she said it. Dallas couldn't go out there without looking like we had worked him over at least a little, or it would destroy Monica's reputation. Considering how long she had been gone, anything to deviate from what people remembered could be dangerous, even deadly, to all three of us. It wouldn't hurt that bad, not really. It wasn't like I was going to seriously injure him or anything. Besides, Monica had said he had been a punching bag for the last however-many years, so this wouldn't be so different…

 _Jesus, what the fuck am I doing?_ I realized suddenly, and abruptly powered down.

I hesitated for a long minute and finally shook my head.

"I won't," I said. I was willing to heal some of the supervillains as the price of admission. I'd probably hurt some of them in hall scuffles or the cage fights; I took that as a given. But I wasn't going to deliberately hurt an ally, a fellow superhero, even for verisimilitude. What the hell had I been thinking?

Anger flashed over Monica's face, followed by exasperation, and then guilt. Dallas' eyes flicked between us, the atmosphere tense enough to break.

"Warren, it's ok. Look," he said, gesturing to the multitude of scars on his exposed arms. "Dallas is tough, and this won't be the first time he's taken hits just for wandering in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"That's not the point," I said quickly. Monica swallowed hard, but she didn't say anything else.

"No, Painbreaker's right. It was dumb to come here. And light burns'll heal faster than bruises and broken bones," Dallas said with ruthless honesty. "Just make it quick, ok?"

"It won't hurt," Monica put in, and Dallas shot her an incredulous sideways glance.

"Are you sure we can't do this some other way? They know you don't leave scars," I pointed out a bit hesitantly.

"Let them think you did this for me. It adds to the impression we're trying to give," she whispered.

"Do it," Dallas said shortly. "I don't need you two to hang for our fuck-ups."

"I don't want people to be too afraid of me to ask for help-."

"Jesus Warren, this isn't Sky fucking High!" Dallas interrupted. "We get it, we really do, but seriously, do this, and fast."

I was mentally running through a whole selection of Mandarin curses at the situation as I let myself go into a near power-up, and grabbed Dallas quickly by the wrists, then upper arms, and then neck, like I had been restraining him. Red handprints were left behind, raised and probably painful, or would have been, if Monica hadn't been channeling the pain to her.

"That looks bad enough," Dallas said philosophically when I pulled away.

"Throw him out of the room Warren," Monica said quickly. Dallas took a few deep breaths, and began to cry, the tears making him look very much the victim.

"Don't worry, I know how to fall," he added.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I banged open the door and heaved Dallas out hard. He hit the opposite wall with a spectacular smash that looked a hell of a lot worse than it was. Heads popped out of doors all along the hall to see what the racket was.

"Pull that stunt again, and it'll go worse for you," Monica announced in a voice that had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

The heads abruptly vanished back into their rooms as I slammed the door shut theatrically. Then I slid down the door and held my head in my hands.

"Jesus," I whispered. "Jesus." That had been one of the most fucked up things that had happened to me in at least twelve hours. I hadn't even hesitated when Monica had first asked me to hurt Dallas, and that had me messed up even more than everything else.

Monica sat down next to me and put her arms around me, hugging tight. She didn't say anything, just dropped her head down on my shoulder, being close to me.

I knew I'd be risking my reputation by coming here, but I didn't think I'd be risking my integrity; what made me a superhero and not just a thug. I had been so careful to keep from hurting people badly since I had graduated; I had given supervillains warnings before letting the fire fly, keeping any injury as light as I could. And now I had just nearly hurt an ally without thought or hesitation.

"What Dallas told me is really going to help. He just put several more people on the list, and took a few others off that could have been bad choices. And with what just happened…" She must have felt me stiffening involuntarily in anger and disgust, because she pressed on quickly. "That really thickened our cover. Both ours and his. Hers. Theirs. I'm not quite sure how that works… But it'll turn out ok, I promise. We're going to get through this. Nobody knows what we know, or can do what we can do. This is going to work, I promise you."

I turned that over in my head for a while, and finally nodded. I couldn't fall apart at everything, even, or perhaps especially, not the worst things.

"You were tired. It's still pretty early," Monica offered as a kind of an "out." "Go back to sleep for a while. No one's going to be awake for a bit yet."

"I had the weirdest dream," I said in sudden remembrance, quickly grabbing on something, anything else to talk about.

"A lot of people have weird dreams around here. The psychic interference…" she waved her hand a bit, indicating the air thick with the mentally poisonous emanations.

"It almost seemed too _sane_ for academy psychics," I muttered as I got up.

"It's been a while since dream analysis, but if you want to talk about it…" She trailed off as I helped her to her feet.

"No it's… nothing," I said finally. I _was_ extremely tired still, and very stressed. Perhaps I should be grateful that my dreams had only been odd and not blood-soaked nightmares.

"Sleep," she suggested. "And when we get up, we can actually do something that isn't going to involve us hating ourselves in the morning."

I snorted a bit at that, half in amusement at the caviler statement, half in relief. We'd be trying to help people from now on; not fixing bodies, but trying to fix minds. We'd be giving people hope and courage, helping them help our friends, helping them take down this place for good. Yeah, it would be easier to sleep at night if I knew I didn't have the dubious task of aiding the enemy in front of me.

"You know, I have to admit that's the most creative and ballsy infiltration plan I've ever heard of," Monica commented, nodding at the door as she sat on the bed.

"No kidding," I muttered. I couldn't believe Elise (and by extension, Tracy) had been working on this since her senior year. Curiously it made me feel a lot better about the Bureau. They had been bringing more resources to bear on the academy than I had ever imagined. They hadn't been ignoring the issue; they just hadn't been telling us everything.

Somehow that was both comforting and a little irritating. I gave myself a mental shake from politics and ethics and everything else; if I tried to sleep while thinking about that I'd end up with nightmares.

I was going to go and sleep on the couch, like I had planned before, but Monica grabbed my hand as I was going to walk by.

"Warren, I'm sorry," she said, not meeting my eyes. "I keep asking you to do things, and I know you don't want to do them. Not even if it means saving ourselves, because you don't want to take this place down at any cost. Some costs are too high."

I hesitated a little, waiting for her to go on.

"I'm… I'm not used to _feeling_ when I'm here. I was always numb before, and using my powers didn't seem that bad because it didn't affect me as much. It just feels so much more intense now and I'm not used to it. What happened with Ash, and what I asked you to do just now, I'm sorry. I need to make myself stop."

"It's because it's _here,_ isn't it? The psychics," I stated. The almost thoughtless way I had been ready to hurt Dallas to save our own cover might have been mostly from exhaustion and stress, but I definitely wouldn't have put it past Psion either. I wasn't immune to her manipulation, thought I thought by being aware of it I could stave off the worst of its effects... that was the theory anyway.

"It might be. But I'm not going to blame them for my own issues. Just… keep reminding me what I should know. Any way you can. Because it's going to be really easy to forget that good things even exist down here," she said, squeezing my hand tightly.

I almost crushed her hand in my return grip, feeling a relief I hadn't known I needed until right now. This was what I needed to know; that she was at least _aware_ of what was going on, that she knew she might be getting messed up. Knowing that she might be reverting was a potent enough motivator to keep an eye on her own behavior. And since she _knew_ it, I didn't feel quite so out of my depth.

"I will," I said, with feeling. Monica tugged on my arm a little and I finally met her eyes. She looked relieved, determined, but also kind of happy.

"I should-," I said, nodding over at the couch.

"Warren, you don't have to be such a gentleman you know," she said, looking up at me with entreaty. I hesitated for a second; we'd already talked about some things in-depth, about boundaries and when would be the right time for some things. But honestly, the way things were going, "the right time" might never arrive.

 _The hell with it,_ I thought, and lay down on the bed again.

It was a lot more comfortable to hold her next to me, and I could feel her relaxing as she drifted into sleep with me. I didn't take any liberties… well, ok, a few. I'd have to have been made of ice to be completely polite at that point. Both of us were a little too tired to go terribly far though. But her skin was sweet when I kissed her neck, and I could feel the flat, taut muscles of her belly trembling slightly when I caressed them.

She was cradled in my arms, her back to me, but she reached back with her hands and glided them through my hair, down to my neck, pressing hard in places that seemed to make me relax almost involuntarily. Eventually we couldn't fight our own exhaustion anymore though, and this time I had no dreams.

* * *

When I woke again, she was shaking my shoulder slightly.

"Come on," she said with a bit of a smile. "I thought you'd like to do something physical."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Like go to the gym," she clarified, but she was still smiling.

"Hmph," I muttered, but got up anyway.

"I generally don't collect people until after breakfast anyways, so…" she shrugged. I just got my things together, still not saying anything. I hadn't had any caffeine yet, so I wasn't going to be fit to talk to until much later in the day. Also, she had a point about the exercising. Neither of us could afford to get out of fighting trim, not even by a little bit.

"Watch the hallways; morning's prime hunting time for some people," she warned when she opened the door.

The silence in the hallways was deafening when we started, but after the fourth or fifth turn, I started to hear the faint thuds and yells of fights. I didn't actually see anything more than a few fleeting shadows, and a couple of times people running through connecting corridors just ahead or behind us. No one bothered us at all.

"It this normal?" I whispered. Monica nodded slightly, and just kept walking serenely. The adrenaline from anticipating getting jumped at any second had woken me up far more effectively than coffee.

"If Ash has two brain cells functioning, he would have warned everyone that I'm back, and that I brought you with me. That buys us a certain level of protection."

I had to force myself to close my ears to the faint cries of pain and surprise around us. I had an automatic reaction to run towards them, one that Monica had to grab my arm to suppress.

"Keep cool," she warned. "This right now? This isn't bad. Bad comes later this evening. Save your strength."

I glared at her, but she was unrepentant.

"I _will not_ see you get ripped apart because I didn't protect you every way I could, do you get me?" she hissed. "I went out already this morning and got the low down on what happened to those spies. You want to know how they died?"

I nodded tightly, my jaw clenched.

"The Headmaster had them locked in cages just big enough for their shifted forms. Then he used some kind of technopathic device to force them to unshift," she said flatly.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I felt a faint roaring in my ears from the rush of blood.

"God," I whispered finally.

"Do you get me?" she asked, twisting the sleeve of my jacket slightly to get my attention. I only nodded as we resumed walking, slightly benumbed by the news. I vaguely noticed that the sounds of fights stopped, and now all the noise was coming from in front of us. A huge maw of a door, not much altered from a natural cave opening, spilled us into the academy gymnasium.

Once inside, I was able to put aside my shock to stare in awe at what they'd done.

This must have been a natural cavern they had enlarged, it was just too big for them to have blasted it out and not have the whole mountain collapse on itself. The ceiling above was high enough for at least a dozen flyers to practice at once, which was exactly what was going on. I thought I recognized Bloodtalon, and there were also some people with wings, some with mechanical suits or jetpacks, and one with no visible means of support flying around each other. Flashes of laser light both from the walls and between the flyers made it look like they were doing a combination of laser tag and dodgeball.

Below, part of the room was devoted to weight equipment (including set-ups for those with super strength), part cordoned off as obstacle courses for agility training with a track around its perimeter, an open floor for freestyle fighting filled nearly half of the available space, and an elaborate target range that took up most of one curving wall. To one side was what looked like a caged Save the Citizen-type floor, ringed with seats.

Everything but the cage was in full use, with dozens of students all striving to make themselves just that much tougher. Flashes of light from the combats above and below were a little distracting, coming both from those with the lasers and those with energy powers.

As Monica wove her way through the practicing supervillains, I kept noticing big differences between here and Sky High. The equipment wasn't all that different, but its mismatched nature revealed it had been stolen. There wasn't a whole lot of practice armor, energy buffer panels, force fields, null-grav, safety nets, or any other kind of protective equipment. The attitude on the floor was tense, people's faces grim as they pumped iron or ran through the obstacle courses.

It wasn't the kind of hard-faced determination I had seen at school, with people being bound and determined to do their best. No, these were the expressions of people who were fighting for their lives.

"God dammit, hit it harder!" someone yelled over by the punching bags. "If you think that limp-wristed smack is even going to floor a Sidekick, think again! You saw what happened to Ash when Windwalker put him down. You want that to happen to you?"

The chastened fighter, a short guy barely fourteen or so, shook his head violently at his trainer, an older black guy with long purple dreadlocks. The trainer braced the bag again and the kid went to work with a will, heavy knuckles wrapped tightly in old strips of cloth to protect them from the bruising of repeated strikes.

"Come on, fucking hit it! What, are you scared of the damn bag? Put some muscle into those hits or we're switching to freestyle against me." The kid got a horrified look on his face and started pummeling the bad like his life depended on it. Which, I guessed, it very well might have.

The dreadlocked trainer waved the kid to the bench press as we drew closer, and deferentially got Monica's attention.

"Painbreaker? Can I talk to you?" he asked, suddenly becoming extremely polite, dropping his tough-guy routine. There was something about his voice that bothered me; it sounded oddly echoy, like more than one person was talking simultaneously.

"What do you want Duke?" she asked.

"Ah… I was wondering when Phoenix is going to be available," he said, sounding a bit uncertain. Close up, he was in decent shape, but his skin looked strangely streaked with… green? Something odd tickled my mind, a vague hint of wrongness. Was he sick maybe? A long-term illness?

"You already know what your problem is Duke. I doubt Phoenix could help," Monica said flatly.

"Could he try?" Duke persisted.

"I very much doubt he'll have time free at any point soon. If something comes up, I'll let you know," she said very neutrally. Duke set his jaw in a hint of belligerence, but nodded, and turned away from us to head back to the kid.

"What kind of candy-ass weight set-up is that?" he bellowed as went, and several nearby people winced.

"That's Meduka," Monica said as we kept weaving through the gym floor. "He got his powers when he was somewhere over in Europe. Said the wrong thing to the wrong person and ended up with a gypsy curse."

"That's old school," I said with faint wonder. Most new super-beings nowadays got their powers from radiation, or toxic or biologic waste, or some kind of industrial accident or experiment. Gypsy curses, magic rings, and ancient artifacts were very rare in modern super-being history.

"Well, Royal Pain doesn't mind old school. She thought he'd be useful. It's a curse of serpents," she explained.

"Those aren't dreadlocks on his head, are they?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Nope."

"Wow."

"His problem is it's a curse. The snakes attack when he gets within their striking range, whether he wants to or not. He doesn't have really good control over his abilities. _He_ thinks its something that you could fix. I honestly very much doubt it. It's probably as much in his head as in his brain," she said.

I only shook my head. "I really don't know anything about powers like that…"

"He's not the only one like that here; people who can't really control their powers that well, I mean. Dallas and Duke are only two of them. Royal Pain seemed to collect as many power-rejects as not. It makes them feel important to be here; the Bureau really doesn't bother with people who don't have control over their powers… or at least not when they're not that interested in risking their lives for strangers," she said in a low voice, skirting a somersaulting body and finally getting to the target range.

"Maybe I should bring that up to the director," I muttered. It was very true that you didn't see superheroes that couldn't control their powers at least most of the time. You really didn't see many overly reluctant heroes, or those with severe reservations about throwing themselves in the line of danger. I had assumed a lot of that stemmed from the fact that super-powered kids went to places like Sky High, where they got the kind of training they needed. It made me really uncomfortable to think the Bureau might have been only picking kids selectively.

Monica fiddled with the controls for the target range, and small dots of moving light appeared at the end of our alley. Unlike a shooting range for guns, each "alley" was probably a good thirty feet wide, with enough room for skirmishing and strafing shots, acrobatics and anything else you'd need to do.

"Care to join me?" she asked with an arched eyebrow. I flicked my eyes back at the other students and supervillains. Many of them were keeping an eye on her and me, even to their own detriment, like they were looking for an opening. This was like swimming in a pool full of sharks.

"They aren't going to think it's strange that I'm practicing?" I asked quietly. I had somehow been imagining a much smaller gym, or perhaps even a separate room. I found myself reluctant to use any of my powers in front of these guys. I had wanted just to a nice, normal workout to clear my head, not be on display.

"No. I'm taking my dog for his exercise," she said, regarding me frankly. "Nothing strange about that."

"Should I be wearing a leash?" I quipped.

"That could be arranged," she agreed, barely managed to keep a straight face.

 _Bad, bad, bad mental image. Bad Monica, very bad!_ I shouted mentally, my face probably a study in incredulousness. She had to turn away from me so she wouldn't laugh.

"Maybe," I allowed through clenched teeth, trying to keep my imagination in check.

"It could be fun," she breathed in my ear.

Without a word I turned and slammed the first target with an extravagantly large fireball. I was _not_ going to let that conversation go any further, at least not in public. I ran down the line, dodging from imaginary enemies, rolling, skidding, twisting and turning, throwing fire at the targets with every opportunity.

Monica had started a half breath behind me, matching my movements with the ease of long practice. She couldn't actually use her powers unless those targets were actually real people with injuries, but she could make the same gestures she would in a fight. We moved together easily, smoothly, if not perfectly, but by the time we got to the far side of the alley, nine out of every ten targets was dark. For me, that was a damn good run, especially considering everything.

I took a quick second to lean down close to Monica's ear as she checked the scoring computer.

"We're finishing that conversation later, in private," I whispered, and was vindicated to watch her struggle to control a blush.

"Not a bad score-," Monica started, trying to stay cool, and then jumped along with everyone else when the sound of a gun rang through the room.

Everyone turned to find the source at the same time, eyes locking on one of the far alleys of the target range. Two silver figures were moving in a perfect synchronized dance of death, back to back, blinking from position in flashes of blue light. Son of Silver would fire, and an instant later Cutter would throw one of her knives, flying from her hands like silver birds. Five seconds, ten, fifteen and they were done. Monica automatically pulled up their readout on the targeting computer.

"Perfect run," she said softly. I watched the two of them warily, suddenly afraid both of them would take the opportunity to try to kill me, or worse, talk to me. Son of Silver could have killed me very easily during our one and so far only meeting, and I was _not_ eager to cross weapons with him again, for any reason.

As for Cutter… Any thoughts I had about getting a little back for what she had done to Layla were put on hold when I saw Cutter throw her arms around Silver and give him a shameless kiss, right before teleporting them both out of the gym.

"No way…" I said in disbelief.

"The perfect run or what just happened?" Monica asked. I shot her a Look.

"They like to show off. They're the best shots in the school, possibly the best in the greater supervillain community. Phoenix, if Cutter ever gets hurt, I'd be very careful. Silver doesn't like it when people hurt Cutter. It annoys him," she added quietly.

That didn't make me feel any better. Very few people here were on my side, but Cutter, Son of Silver, and most of the rest of the Crew had personal reasons to hurt me. And I was on their turf.

"How many other full-fledged supervillains are here?" I asked in order to distract myself. I was wondering how many more nasty surprises I was going to learn today.

"About fifty teachers and older students like me. But Son of Silver is the only 'mentor' villain to stick around, for obvious reasons. Most of the others don't like hanging around kids."

I breathed a sigh of relief; the idea of encountering Judge Libra down here gave me the crawling horrors. But being under the same roof as Son of Silver was quite bad enough! The idea that Cutter had hooked up with him didn't bode well for me at all. Luck going the way it did, I might have to try to heal Cutter. And somehow I thought that wasn't going to happen, no matter how bad she was; I didn't think I could put how I felt about her aside.

 _Ok, stop making up horror scenarios before they happen Peace. Those two probably just wander in here to make everyone else feel inferior; don't go reading too much into this! The world doesn't revolve around you,_ my brain reminded me fiercely.

"I hate this place with the fire of a thousand suns," I muttered, a quote I had stolen from a movie or something.

"Me too," Monica said.

* * *

The rest of the workout went much more normally; weight lifting, running, going through the obstacle course. No one came to talk to us, and no other unexpected persons showed up. As a matter of fact, people tended to avoid us, though they kept a wary eye on whatever section we happened to be in. I wasn't entirely sure if they were scared of Monica or wanting to attack me. Maybe it was both.

Either way, it made me tense and wary, and by the time we were done, I was starting to get a headache from trying to watch everyone at once.

"Painbreaker doesn't eat with the peons. Come on, we can get out of here for a while," she murmured. Everyone else was streaming in one general direction, I assumed towards the cafeteria, but the older students, those who were acting as trainers, all headed towards their own rooms.

Back in Monica's room, I ate only because I knew I'd need the energy. It could have been sawdust for all I knew; my attention was elsewhere. We went over the finishing touches of the plans we had worked out for talking to our potential students, and Monica gave me a very brief run-down on some of the people we were talking to today as we left the room.

The first person on Monica's list wasn't one of the technopaths, but a desperately unhappy shapeshifter, one who could turn into a horse, specifically a black stallion. He was only a henchman, partnered with someone Monica described as the "cowboy from hell," and wasn't having an easy time of it. Unlike some minions, who thrived on the negative attention and reflected notoriety they got from their supervillains, he had always been wary and skittish.

"His supervillain name is Nightsteed, but his real name is Quint," she murmured in an undertone as we walked into the cafeteria. The place wasn't all that different from Sky High; the major difference being instead of large windows, the concrete walls were covered with elaborate, overlapping graffiti. Like the rest of the academy, the lighting was dim, and the conversation was muted.

But when Monica and I entered, we walked in a cone of silence. Conversation died when we approached and only picked up in whispers when we passed. Monica walked amongst the groups of students slowly, looking around casually, before putting her hand on one guy's shoulder. If I hadn't known his powers, I could have guessed them; he had a long face and large nose, big teeth, and was skinny and bony with long, dark coarse hair. He jumped slightly in the silence, and then turned and shuffled slowly to his feet in defeated resignation.

As Monica led Quint away, I was struck by the difference between the academy and Sky High. If, in Sky High, one of the hall monitors or teachers had come and gotten you at lunch to serve a detention, you would have gotten commiseration, teasing, sympathy, or congratulation, according to the kinds of friends you had. The couple of times Zack and Magenta had ended up there (for PDA) we had given them all kinds of grief and jokes. Here everyone just hung their heads and tried to pretend Quint didn't exist.

For them, I didn't exist either. Some of them snuck sideways glances at Monica, but no one even tried to look at me. I wasn't used to being ignored, not even by my enemies, and it was a distinctly disconcerting feeling.

Monica began to walk Quint to the small room in the middle of the maze-like academy, past the heavily soundproofed rooms that housed the underground hydropower plant, the control rooms, the many weapons' rooms, and others with no known purpose. Quint tried to go slower and slower as Monica prodded him closer to his workroom, his face growing paler by the minute.

She chivvied him along persistently, through a heavy door and into a metal chair in the middle of a small, bare room. It was a clichéd setting, the small dark chamber with a single bright light, one chair, and one door. I supposed that was the point though; anyone who saw this room had little doubt as to its purpose.

Quint sat in the chair, hunched over, arms folded protectively over his chest. He was wearing a shapeless, baggy sweater and jeans that looked far too big for him, and he huddled in them like he was trying to hide.

I was nervous as hell as to what was going to happen next. Some of what we were going to say and do we had planned beforehand, but some would be dictated by how Quint reacted. I thought we had covered most of the contingencies during that long car ride to the academy, but it was possible something unexpected would happen. I just had to try to keep my calm, no matter what happened. As Monica had warned me, none of these guys were angels.

There were several long minutes of silence as Monica stood in front of Quint, with me off to the side, waiting for a signal. Her face was blank and hard, like it was carved out of wood; there was not a drop of emotion in her expression, nothing to reassure or even frighten Quint. The silence grew awkward, then tense, then nearly excruciating.

"Did Jack complain?" Quint asked finally, in a very small voice.

"I have not even spoken to him, so you may assume he remains pleased with your performance," she replied evenly.

"Ok." Quint kept looking at the ground, his head and back bent like he was expecting a blow.

Monica looked up at me and nodded. I took a single deep breath and moved in front of Monica. Quint snapped his head up and looked almost ready to cry.

"I've done everything you ask, I swear! You can ask Jack! I've even… trampled people… just like he asked, I did everything! I-," he almost wailed in protest, looking only at Monica.

"Dude, chill, I'm not here to hurt you," I said quickly, trying to cut through his hysteria. Quint shut up instantly and wrenched his gaze to me.

"What?" he asked.

"Monica, go sit down or something," I said quietly. Monica shrugged and sat down against the wall next to the door, knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them in an odd mirror of Quint's pose. It was deliberate, to make him feel better, and I turned back to see his incredulous expression.

"I'm not here to hurt you," I repeated. "You don't want to be here, right?"

Quint's eyes kept snapping back and forth between me and Monica, looking for the trick.

"Remember my first rule Quint?" Monica asked in a tired voice.

"No lies in this room," he responded instantly.

"No one is lying to you; not him, not me," she said, and put her head back down.

"She's not going to hurt you or anyone else anymore unless it's self-defense. Ok? I won't let her, and she knows better after all this time," I said. Quint looked astonished, but he actually looked like he was thinking about what I was saying. What I had said was the strict truth, but he was probably coming to a slightly different conclusion than what had actually happened in the three years she had been away from the academy.

"You… came here on purpose?" he breathed.

"You don't want to be here, right?" I asked again.

"No! No… but I had to. There was that thing with the rancher…" he trailed off, but I only nodded encouragingly. That was probably something he hadn't felt since he got to the academy. "It wasn't my fault, he used spurs!" he blurted, and flushed. "I hurt him getting away, and when the Headmaster found me, he warned me the Bureau would lock me up for doing that, so I really had to come here."

"You do know the academy is a lying sack of shit," I stated casually. Quint looked terrified, glancing over at Monica like he was expecting her to rise up to strike me down. When nothing happened, he began to straighten his back a little.

"No, I don't want to be here," he said with conviction.

"One of these days, the superheroes aren't going to stand back and let themselves get pounded by people like Cutter and Jack," I pointed out. I didn't even know exactly who this mysterious "Jack" was, other than the obvious that he was Quint's villain, but from Monica's vague description he wasn't a nice guy. Well, with most supervillains, "not a nice guy" was a fairly safe way of describing them.

"So what's going to happen?" Quint asked.

"Eventually they're going to take this place down. When that happens, you know they'll have everyone out there to fight. How'd you like to buck Jack off of you and run away, leave this whole thing behind you instead?" I asked.

Quint sat bolt upright, surprise warring with savage joy on his face. He looked positively feral right then, but more animated than I had seen him yet. Like Monica had said, there were no angels here. Quint said he had trampled people, even if it was under protest, but he was subject to whatever cruel whims his supervillain chose to heap on him, along with whatever else the academy teachers decreed.

I wouldn't ask him to fight, but instead I'd ask him for what I guessed he _really_ wanted: freedom. Taking a bit of revenge… I wouldn't blame him for that at all, but getting free of this place would be worth more to him than trying to pay back everyone for what had happened to him. That was the heart and soul behind Monica's list: people who wanted freedom or justice over revenge. There were some people who would be delighted to get free of the academy… just so they could commit villainy on their own terms. People like Quint just wanted out.

"How?" he asked cautiously, his initial excitement fading. "I mean, they'll catch me, the Bureau'll catch me! I can't, I mean I have to use my powers, all they have to do is look for a wild black horse and they'll find me!"

"The academy lied to you about damn near everything, and you know it," I pointed out. Quint started to cry, and buried his face in his hands. I was profoundly uncomfortable, and clenched a fist, feeling helpless. He wasn't going to accept a shoulder to cry on, not from me, and anger at the academy flared in me.

 _Look what the hell you've done. You have your students either crazed psychopaths or broken shells. Damn you to hell!_ I snarled mentally.

Quint got himself under control very fast, considering the circumstances, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and cringing again when he saw my expression.

"I'm so sorry," Monica said softly from her corner. Quint shot her a look of pure hatred and suddenly shoved himself out of his seat.

"I bet you could have fucking stopped this whenever you wanted! And you didn't do shit!" he yelled.

"I wasn't much better off than you. You know they're making us all crazy, making us think we have to use our powers, that nobody wants us but them-."

"You fucking _tortured_ me!" he screamed. A ripple seemed to pass over his body, something I had seen more than once in Magenta when she was about to shift. "For what? For nothing!"

_Shit, if he shifts in here he'll crush us like bugs!_

I quickly stepped between them and put my hand on his chest, physically blocking him from getting any closer to Monica.

"She's paying for what she did. Let me worry about her," I said forcefully.

Quint seemed to quiver with repressed rage, but finally turned his back on Monica and flung himself back in his chair. Monica had dropped her head again and her shoulders were shaking. I knew she was crying silently, and had had her shoulders tensed for a blow from Quint. Part of that was acting, it had been in the plan… but I knew a lot of that was real. You'd have to have been made of stone to not be affected by the raw emotion in Quint's voice.

"I want to help you," I said, trying to keep my voice even. I didn't like what he had been about to do; he was obviously not terribly stable, but all things considered, he hadn't been out of line at all.

"How? You bring the heroes here, we'll kill 'em, simple as that. I run after that, the academy will kill me," he pointed out.

"Let me worry about the details."

"The devil's in the details," Quint snarked.

" _God's_ in the details," I shot back. "There's a plan, and the academy isn't going to be in any kind of shape to hunting you down afterwards. And the Bureau isn't a tenth as bad as they told you. You hurt people. Yeah, they won't like that. It won't be a free ride, but they aren't going to coerce you into anything. They aren't going to cage you."

"Prove it," he challenged. "You talk big, Mr. Big-Shot Hero, but I don't see a whole lot of changes going on around here."

"You know what I can do? That I can heal people?"

"Yeah? So? I'm not hurt right now," he said bitterly. The implication that he had been hurt, and probably repeatedly in the past, didn't escape me.

"You think you _have_ to use your powers. That's why you haven't just run away before, because you'd try to hide and eventually you'd have to shift. Then the academy, or worse, the Bureau'd catch you. That's what you've been thinking, right?"

Quint nodded warily.

"The psychics have been messing with your head since the day you got here. They have your powers all bound down. I can cut the binding. You get control of yourself back. And all you have to do, when the times comes, is to run away."

Quint was staring at me, but his eyes weren't focused. He was deep in his own head, wagering truth against lies, the promise of freedom against pain and continued physical and mental torment. He was trying to figure out if he could trust me enough to say yes, he'd betray the academy.

This was the reason why I had to be in charge in the workroom. If Monica had been the one to offer freedom, to counsel running away instead of fighting the superheroes, her victims would have, with complete justification, assumed she was testing the loyalty she had so painfully tried to instill in them. At best, they wouldn't have run given the opportunity, guessing they'd be rewarded for fighting on the academy's side when the superheroes were defeated. At worst, they'd try to turn her in to the Headmaster to save themselves from getting caught up in her "illegal" plan.

But if I were in control, if Monica stayed in my shadow, if I used my powers to give them a tangible effect of freedom, they'd be more inclined to believe I was telling the truth. If Monica had been in charge, and I still used my powers to help, they'd probably still believe it was a test.

But Monica was shuddering, curled up in a corner, clearly not in any kind of control, not even of herself. Her own breakdown convinced them of my sincerity. I wasn't offering them intimidation; I was offering them a deal. Maybe that wasn't terribly heroic, but a free ride would have looked too suspicious for people steeped in years of academy philosophy. Even the best of them stole things and hurt people; they had to just to eat. An even deal seemed terribly noble by comparison.

"Ok," Quint said finally. "Do you thing."

Even now he was bracing himself, ready for one last cruel trick. _Goddamn, this place sucks…_ I thought to myself.

"If this starts to hurt, push me away," I warned him, and stepped forward to put my hands on his temples.

It was easy to concentrate and find it, even though Quint had no other kinds of injuries barring the power binding. Maybe it was just because this was the third time I had tried to heal this exact injury; maybe focusing on the same thing over and over again actually gave me better focus when looking at someone's life-fire. Whatever the reason, I mentally slashed at the black band, and found myself suddenly tumbling on the floor as Quint's fire consumed the band with a flare of brilliant orange and red.

Quint had one hand out where he had pushed me away, and was shoving his sweat-soaked hair back from his face with the other. He was flushed from the excess heat, the byproduct of my healing, but had the most profound look on his face. It wasn't just relief from his injury; I knew that expression well enough. It was also the relief of suddenly being able to believe in something he hadn't dared hope.

"You… weren't… shitting… me," he said slowly, pronouncing each word with care.

I picked myself up off the floor, and shrugged shortly.

"I wouldn't sneak in to this place, pretend I'm under _her_ thumb," I said acerbically, nodding at Monica, "go around healing some of the real psychopaths in here, and destroy my own reputation just to goddamn _shit you."_

"Hah!" Quint almost barked, then snorted with repressed laughter. "So… you're going to burn this place down?"

"One way or another. All you have to do is run," I said.

Quint nodded slowly. "I run pretty good," he said laconically, and unexpectedly reached out and shook my hand.

"Yeah, I bet you do," I said, a little touched. "Look, don't look or act-."

"Dude, seriously, I won't fuck this up," he interrupted.

 _Duh,_ I thought. _He's already had the "fitting in" speech from Monica several times before under a lot worse circumstances. He'll keep his mouth shut about this or he knows he'll probably die trying._

"It'll be soon," I said.

"…Thanks," he said finally, and left. I let out a huge sigh of relief as soon as the door closed.

Neither Monica nor I had wanted to give out exact dates, just in case she had miscalculated about someone and they went to one of the teachers. From a pure dialogue standpoint, it sounded like I was encouraging some of the more timid henchmen to be cowards, and that the superheroes would attack _en masse_ someday soon. That wasn't exactly earth-shattering news, not with what I had said to Psion or given the academy's own goals. Monica's supposed breakdown could be explained as just an elaborate loyalty scheme, using me, her pet, as a kind of proxy.

The only real evidence was what I was going to be doing to each of these students, cutting the coercion that made their powers not always under their own control. If they confronted me on that, I'd only say that it felt wrong and I had to fix it. They wanted me to heal, so I was healing! Let them argue _that_ point.

"Monica, you ok?" I asked, kneeling down next to her. She lifted her head up, and surprisingly there were no tears.

"Yes, I'm fine. You were great," she said with a small smile. "'God's in the details,' that was kind of-."

"Ok, it was kind of lame," I admitted. "I just didn't want to give him a chance to blow this off."

"It wasn't lame," she insisted. "It was pretty nice actually."

"You're being too cheerful again. You're freaking me out," I warned with irony.

"I know how to cry without tears. Otherwise the guys outside the workroom will figure out that I _have_ been crying and they'll wonder why," she said.

Monica shouldn't have had to hold back. She should be _able_ to cry during things like this. She _needed_ to cry, to get out whatever she had been holding back for however long. Mom had told me that unshed tears tended to remain inside, building up like poison. She said she had probably cried a small river over my dad and how he'd destroyed her life, and for good reason.

"Damn…" I muttered.

"Besides, we have a dozen other people after him just this morning. If you have to wait for me to get a cold compress and a box of tissues after each person, we're never going to get done," Monica continued ruthlessly. "There are hundreds of people here, and we need as many of them on our side as we can get."

"No argument here, but this is going to fucking kill you!" I protested. I could not possibly imagine how bad this was going to be, forcing herself to be the victim time after time after time… Seeing it in real life was much harder than talking about it in the abstract.

"I'm stronger than you think," she said sternly, eyes flashing. "You hold back because you're trying to protect me…" She trailed off, raising up the glittering finger-blades threateningly.

I caught her up in a fierce hug, ignoring the blades entirely, and trailed one hand down her neck soothingly.

"Call me crazy if I want to protect my girlfriend," I whispered.

"My knight in black leather armor," she said, looking up at me, and delicately brushing my hair out of my eyes. "I know, I do, but it's my turn to throw myself in the line of fire now. It's just… an emotional line of fire instead of a literal one. I need to do this like you need to haul people out of burning building and smack around thugs like Hammerfist. It's my turn. Joy told me I'd have to do something like this one day."

"You really hated sitting in the ambulance all this time," I stated.

"Honey, you have no idea."

I took another deep breath and reluctantly let her go.

"So that's hopefully one down…"

"And several dozen more to go," Monica finished.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon was an emotional roller coaster of epic proportions. Despite the fact I was asking these guys to take a risk of monumental proportions, two things always convinced them: Monica's broken submission and my own proof that they had been mentally manipulated for years, by breaking the black bands on their powers.

Some were harder to convince than Quint, and one person had even managed to hit Monica in anger before I'd gotten between them, holding onto my temper with teeth and toenails. That one had been a particularly hard case that took me almost thirty minutes to convince, but she'd had her reasons. Others agreed quickly in almost hysterical relief that there was light at the end of the tunnel, and it _wasn't_ the headlight of an oncoming train.

There were so many: we talked to almost thirty people. We couldn't help but keep up such an insane pace though; with several hundred people in the academy, we'd be very hard-pressed to even get a quarter of them on our side in the short time we had. Anything less than that might not turn enough of the tide to make a difference. The only reason this was working was because Monica had done all the scouting beforehand.

It was kind of frightening, changing people's outlook with a handful of sincere words. It _was_ a kind of manipulation, like what the academy had done to them, but hopefully for a better reason, and with better results. I realized this was how my mom felt when she used her powers. I held more power right now in these people's hearts and minds than I ever had as Phoenix.

I was getting a lot better at what I was going to say each time, and in anticipating their reactions, but the emotional investment of using my powers was only slightly less of a drain on me than what Monica was going through. Despite the fact that people were screaming at her during every single interview, I knew this was being oddly cathartic to her. Yeah, it sucked majorly, but I knew she felt like she was finally taking responsibility for what'd she'd done to each person.

"I think I'm going to get through this," she said after the last person, finally uncurling from her ball and standing up shakily. "I think this is good for me."

"I thought we talked about not being masochists," I warned her. I hated seeing her huddled in the corning, taking the screaming abuse of the minions like it was her due.

"I'm not _enjoying_ this, buster," she said in a slightly brittle voice. "I talked about this before, with Joy, so… just let me take my medicine."

I was about to respond when a loud, deep tone suddenly reverberated through the very stone of the walls.

"What the-?"

"Gym class," Monica said shortly, her expression shifting from the complex one of acceptance and tempered fragility to hard-edged anger. "The cage fight games."

"Do they expect-?"

"Yes, we both have to be there," she said shortly.

"Anything about them I should know?" I asked, reaching for the rest of my costume. After everything I had been through today, the idea of simply pounding on someone that actually _deserved_ it was uncomfortably satisfying.

"We call it Blood and Bones."

 _This is not going to go well,_ I thought.


	45. Blood and Bones

"Everyone's expected to be there unless you're laid up in the infirmary or out on assignment. We have to go," she repeated more urgently.

"Blood and Bones?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered shortly, tossing me the bag that held my helmet and gauntlets and shouldering her own bundled costume. "The matches go to blood and bones. Until blood flows or somebody breaks something," she explained. "Not everyone fights every day, but if you keep avoiding volunteering, someone will call you out, and it's never pretty."

We threaded our way back through the halls, more crowded as we got closer and closer to the gym, everyone either garbed in their costumes or carrying them close at hand. The costumes were either extremely garish or terribly dark, pushing the edges of decency in all directions.

This was completely different from going to the gym this morning. Then the halls had been empty and fights echoed around us. Now the halls thronged with people, and everyone's attention was focused on getting to their destination. As we broke through the crowd into the enormous gym, I could see the cage floor lit up brightly and the tiers of seats filling fast.

The crowd was rowdy, a big switch from everything I had seen so far. People were talking loudly over some kind of thumping music, so distorted by the echoes and noise I couldn't even make out the melody, let alone the lyrics. No one had painted their chests or made signs, but the whole set-up reminded me more of a professional wrestling match than the Save the Citizen floor at school. Or maybe more like ultimate cage fighting, more chance for serious injuries.

The tiers were packed, though Monica, now in her black, tent-like Painbreaker costume, easily found seats for us. I spied Dallas, Bruin, Cutter, and Viper, along with some of the others I had healed last night, scattered through the crowd. Little cliques were fairly obvious; people banding together from different villain-teams and pairs for sole purpose of intimidating anyone that might be "playing" today.

The cage floor was quite a bit different than the one at Sky High. Most obviously, it lacked the grinder in the middle of the floor. All the usual obstacles were there, dumpster, park bench, mailbox, street lamp, and all the others, but no grinder, no citizen dummy, no mannequins of any kind.

It made me realize that the citizen didn't matter. The villains were just practicing beating up the heroes by beating up each other. Other people didn't matter. Citizens didn't matter. Only winning mattered.

I kept my jaw clamped shut as I slowly surveyed the crowd. The fights in the halls were supposed to hurt any potential opponent, and there were plenty of people who were guarding sore arms or legs, bruised or broken ribs, or who had their costumes tugged to one side to hide bruising or bandages. Flickers of wrongness from the people nearest me swam through my consciousness; it was like a cloud of gnats around my head. Combined with the loud music and constant chatter, it was wearing me down.

Monica only stared stonily ahead, still as a statue, not reacting to any of the antics of the students and villains. The raucousness of the crowd was a big switch from the fear-filled mostly-silent faces of the majority of the people I'd seen here so far. But it wasn't the kind of anticipation that usually came before a good match or even a good fight; what I was seeing on these kid's faces was a lot darker than that.

A few minutes later the ref appeared on the floor, dressed in a tough-looking mechanical suit; he was incongruously swinging a whistle round and round. Idly I wondered how he was supposed to blow it through his visor.

He turned his head to stare all around the cage, his blank visor seeming to glare at one person after another.

"Who is that?" I murmured.

"It's one of the teachers. They change it each time. That's why they wear the suit. It's for anonymity."

The ref finally pointed into the crowd, at whom I couldn't exactly tell, and the crowd began to scream.

"First up, Flamewing versus Saurian Lord!" he shouted, his voice booming through hidden speakers. The crowd took up chants of their names, dividing up into factions to cheer on their chosen combatants. It didn't surprise me when some people started to circulate through the crowd around me, taking money for bets.

From opposite ends of the cage, the two chosen fighters entered. Flamewing proved to be Ash, his garish orange costume now repaired, and looking none the worse for his crushed arm last night. _Probably picked him to see if I actually did my job or not,_ I thought cynically.

Saurian strolled out in his ridiculous barbarian getup, flanked by two mechanical velociraptors, their claws gleaming with razor-edged metal.

Ash clasped his hands in front of him, took a deep breath, and quickly struck his wrists together several times, like striking a match, sparks flying high each time. Finally his arms caught on fire, and he flung them wide with a yell of triumph. Fiery wings with a nearly thirty-foot span now engulfed his arms, the heat palpable even to me.

 _That's a fucking cool power…_ I thought with a hint of envy.

The two robots by Saurian Lord crouched, chattering their teeth and grinding their claws on the floor. Saurian Lord drew a huge machete from his belt, and screamed back at Ash in a wordless howl of challenge.

"Blood and Bones!" the ref thundered, and sounded the whistle.

"Blood and Booooooooooooooones!" the crowd howled back. Everyone, down to the most timid henchman, even Dallas, even Monica, started screaming for carnage.

Ash leapt for the top of the cage, his wings sweeping waves of heat and sparks over the crowd. Saurian Lord's velociraptors began to leap to incredible heights, snapping at Ash's feet from different angles. The game became clear; Ash's wings could easily melt vital components in the robots, or could badly hurt Saurian Lord, but Ash had to guard himself from three opponents at once every time he tried to close to combat distance.

Ash flew in between all three with incredible agility, dodging the sharp claws or machete blows with barely a hair's width to spare, even managing to get the two robots to smash into each other one time. But Saurian Lord wasn't going to accept that kind of humiliation lying down, and while one robot kept Ash flying backward while leaping and biting at his face, the second was climbing up the cage behind him. Everyone was screaming at him, the dinosaurs, the ref, and each other in a frenzy, and the sound was deafening.

I could see the end of the fight coming, and it wasn't going to be pretty. The second robot would smash down on Ash's back, bear him to the ground and rip into him… Somehow Ash managed to hear a warning through all the incredible noise, and twisted just as the robot above him jumped. He swept his wings upward, and then down together in a hammering blow, slamming the leaping robot into the one on the floor and sending both of them crashing into Saurian Lord.

He couldn't even react in time, and hundreds of pounds of metal slammed right on top of him. There was a sickening crunch, and I actually saw his thigh bend in a way nature hadn't intended.

"Boooooooooooooones!" the crowd screamed and Ash landed in triumph, arcing his fiery wings in a victory cheer as other students hauled Saurian Lord away.

"Damn… I need to get to him," I said, right at Monica's ear. Villain or no, a break like that could sever arteries, and he could be bleeding out right now. I wasn't going to let anyone die on my watch, not if I could help it. The academy would probably be mega pissed if he died while I was here.

"Stay. You move now and you won't get far. No one leaves Blood and Bones until dismissed," she hissed. I tried to strain to see where Saurian Lord had been hauled, but outside the range of the lights, everything was lost in shadow.

"He could be dying," I protested. Wasn't that the whole reason they had wanted me in the first place?

"It's not as bad as it looks," Monica insisted. I hesitated; Monica's ability to sense pain had a much longer range than my ability to detect injury. However, some injuries that didn't hurt that much could still have deadly consequences if left untreated. Monica seemed to sense my restlessness, and grabbed onto my arm to keep me there.

"Stay and watch. Do not leave," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Under the eyes of hundreds of academy members, I couldn't disobey, and turned back to the cage floor with ill grace.

Most of the other fights weren't so nearly well matched. Most of them were over in seconds, when one punch would split someone's lip or bloody someone's nose, and it'd be off to the next one. Sometimes they were clearly cathartic for one of the fighters, fists or powers flying in fierce rage to pummel their opponent nearly senseless. No one called for me, even thought I could feel eyes on me from every angle. I knew some of those people were in intense pain, because Monica was running a color commentary next to me, but I was suddenly glad I wasn't being asked to perform in public. With the noise and distractions, I didn't think I'd be able to do it right.

"Broke his nose there, jaw will be sore, definitely going to lose some teeth, ah, he's going to lose that thumbnail, no doubt there," she would say. Nothing life threatening, possibly other than Saurian Lord's leg, but some of those people were so scared, even if they were hiding it, that they couldn't even strike back properly. Some people found this cathartic, but others were finding it pure hell.

Others who fought were clearly of those "reject" variety Monica had talked about. Some people's powers fizzled when they tried to use them, shifting only halfway or even less, energy powers that hurt their user when activated, unusual strength or resiliency that seemed to ebb and flow unpredictably. The crowd jeered at them, rattling the cage and screaming insults when they had to resort to normal fisticuffs. Some of those fights were the most brutal, as people tried to take out their frustrations on their sparring partners.

The fights must have gone on for almost an hour, and the ref, his mechanical suit now slightly spattered in blood, was scanning the crowd again, looking for his next pair of fighters. Seemingly by accident, his visor locked on me.

"Phoenix!" he called, and the incredible sound suddenly went silent as everyone turned to look at me. "And… Cowboy Jack!"

The screams resumed as Monica gave me a discrete nudge and I numbly made my way to the floor, alone. Being called out for Save the Citizen in school hadn't made me feel this way. People rarely did it; Lash had only done it that one time out of a sense of mischief, and people rarely called me out after Will and I started working as a team, because we were hard to beat.

I entered my side of the cage, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. It bugged me beyond all measure that no one had come to get me for Saurian Lord during all of this time; he could be seriously damaged, and the sooner I got to him the better. No one else had been hurt that bad; bruised faces or limbs, cracked ribs, but nothing like a broken femur. I had to be fast, I had to trick Jack into closing so I could finish this quickly…

Cowboy Jack, Quint's supervillain, was strolling down through the crowd on the opposite side to enthusiastic cheers. He was wearing what looked like a full-on cowboy outfit made from biker leather, with a silver wire lasso coiled around his shoulder and chest.

"Where's mah _hoss?"_ he demanded loudly as he entered the floor. A subdued Quint entered a minute later, looking miserable and awkward in his similar costume, cut almost to look more like bondage gear than working cowboy clothes.

"Phoenix, go easy on mah hoss, I got doings later tonight," he drawled, uncoiling his lasso and whirling it around his head in a show for the crowd. I could see arcs of electricity snapping from it as he spun it, and then coiled it back over his chest, keeping it right at hand. That costume of his, over the top as it was, would insulate him from his own weapon. And even if he couldn't zap me with it, all he'd have to do was rope me and have Quint trample me… Not necessarily easy to avoid that.

If I'd been fighting them on the street in a normal hero/villain situation, I would have gone after Quint, or rather Nightsteed, first. One of the first things I'd learned once in the real world was that someone who was cut off from his transportation was twice as easy to defeat. I'd just never had to think about a horse as transportation before. And right now, I couldn't. It wasn't fair that this fight was two against one, but I didn't have a choice.

 _Don't hit Quint, don't give him any reason to doubt you, don't hit Quint,_ I repeated mentally, and let the fire flare along my hands and arms in my own display. Jack frowned just a little bit, and turned to snap his fingers at Quint.

Quint's whole body rippled and then shifted, rearing up as a huge, nightmare-black stallion, his hide striped with old scars. Jack gestured imperiously and a couple of younger students ran in with a saddle and bridle, strapping them on with the speed and ease of long practice.

 _God, that must be humiliating,_ I realized. Magenta flatly hated anyone treating her like an animal when she was shifted; though she let Zack, and only Zack, pet her. For Quint, to have someone strap all that stuff like he was just a normal, unintelligent animal… No wonder he had seemed so eager at the possibility of getting back at Jack.

Jack swung up on the saddle and hauled on the reins, and Nightsteed reared, screaming. The crowd answered back with the ref, "Blood and Boooooooones!"

I didn't give Jack any more time for theatrics, and opened up with fireball after fireball, scorching the air and illuminating the place in hellish red light. All of my hits were high, and Jack's eyes went wide as he spurred Nightsteed out of the way of the barrage, deflecting the ones that connected by way of his protected arms. He kept Nightsteed going, jumping over the obstacles as he went, giving me no more easy shots.

I deliberately stopped the fire and crouched, ducking behind a mailbox. The academy way was to attack, attack, and attack, until your opponent got hurt in some way. Even if you used cover or deception, people still attacked, they had to in order to end the game. But I wasn't here to hurt anyone; everyone knew that, and Jack probably wanted to take advantage of it. He wanted the chance to beat up on a superhero without consequences.

My first volley of fire was to make Jack be wary of me. I wanted him to respect what I could do. And I wanted Quint to know I wasn't going to go after him, no matter what. He had to trust me, and no amount of words was going to convince him like actions would.

Jack took the opening, loosing his lasso and powering it up as he turned Nightsteed to run me down. The lasso crackled as Jack tossed it for me, the crowd screaming as I rolled to avoid it, the crackling wire just sparking along my back as I ducked behind a dumpster.

 _Damn he's fast,_ I realized, avoiding getting roped at the last second. I'd never been to a rodeo, never seen anyone use a lasso outside of a movie, and hadn't realized how quick someone could be with one. Nightsteed leapt over me, neighing, missing me by inches. He kicked as I was trying to somersault back, and caught me full in the chest, slamming me into the cage.

People were clutching onto the cage walls from the outside, and some of them tried to reach through to pin me to give Jack an easier shot. I powered up and slammed my hands back, scorching several hands and forcing them to let go. Jack had spurred Nightsteed around while I was getting free, and cast the lasso again. This time I had no chance to dodge, and it snapped around my ankle and jerked me to the ground.

I did the only obvious thing; I grabbed the lasso and yanked, not on the loop around me, but on the rope Jack was holding. With a startled yell, Jack was half out of the saddle, and a discrete buck from Nightsteed helped put him flat on the ground.

Furious, I hauled Jack to me like a fish on a line, and he didn't seem to have the wit to _let go_ of the damned rope! In a panic, he tried to brace himself on the obstacles, but I ruthlessly tore him free. The silver rope was in my hands as Jack tumbled at my feet, and Nightsteed pranced away from me. I could see his coat was wet with sweat, and his flanks were cut. Jack's spurs had blood on them.

"Kill, kill, kill!" I heard people chant, the sound pounding on my ears relentlessly. Anger started to swell, unstoppable and volcanic. I could give them blood and bones, for everything they'd done, for everything _he_ had done. The rope was in my hands; Jack wasn't even wearing neck protection. I wouldn't even need my powers.

"Kill, kill, kill!" The screams were nearly drilling themselves into my brain. A pounding like my own heart thudded in my ears, an insidious whisper hissing in my mind.

"Phoenix, kill, Phoenix, kill!"

_Kill… So easy…_

Nightsteed screamed, the sound cutting across the chanting, and the pounding stopped. It took an uncomfortable amount of self-control to avoid powering up, but instead I punched down as Jack tried to rise, catching him in the mouth and splitting his lip. Blood dripped as Jack slammed back to the floor.

"Blood!" the crowd howled. "Blood, blood, blood. Phoenix, Phoenix, blood, blood, blood!" My name and the screams for violence crashed together like waves in a surf, powerful and disorienting. It was so strange; it reminded me a little of my phans back in Maxville, calling my name. Like they were welcoming me…

Quint, shifted back to human, crossed over to Jack to help him up, looking up at me with veiled gratitude. I finally managed to look up at the crowd, and noticed some of the other faces of people I'd helped today. They were cheering with wild enthusiasm, mostly swallowed up by their neighbors, but a lot more sincere than the others.

"Class dismissed," the ref said loudly, and the crowd quickly began to disperse. I saw Monica at the exit to the floor and crossed to her like I was sleepwalking. She pulled me away from the milling crowd, overhearing conversations about people going out for "work" or other mayhem. She shoved me into a storage closet, pushed me down on a box and shut the door.

The noise abruptly cut off, and I sat very still, taking off my helmet and letting my heart rate return to something approximating normal. Monica was silent, and I was grateful for the quiet and the chance to think. I hadn't seen anything like that ever before. The pounding music, the shouts of the crowd, the vicious bloodsport with no consequences; it was easy to get lost in it, go along with the crowd, give into it. With all the pressure the academy students were under, Blood and Bones was a huge emotional release, if only vicariously. It was both a reason for them to stay and reason for them to want to run. And it was a release for their unpredictable powers too. No wonder they had been chanting for me; if I had killed Jack (something that had been closer than I wanted to admit), the academy would have had it on video as proof that I had turned.

But now those people in the crowd, the ones I had helped and was going to, they now knew I wasn't bullshitting when I said I wasn't going to hurt them, even under extreme provocation. Quint was the only one who had actually done me any damage, and the only one that had hurt _him_ was Jack. I'd proved I was still a hero, at least to them. _They_ hadn't known what was going on in my head.

They believed me now, and with all the other people I'd be talking to, I was going to practically have my own little army. It felt like playing with fire, because eventually they'd all be ready to go on my command. All of them, dozens, possibly even a hundred people or more.

I could actually help change them for the better, instead of just rescue them. Hell, if I wanted to, I could help them all escape every vestige of academy retribution and Bureau suspicion. I could even lead them, and bring my friends along to help. I could make a totally new kind of super organization, without the crazy cruelty of the academy or the insistence on perfection and total dedication of the Bureau.

There were a lot of imperfect superbeings, like Meduka and others like him, which the Bureau overlooked on principle. If the Bureau heroes couldn't win, they really didn't want them, and didn't make an effort to look for them. The Bureau was concerned about image; they wouldn't want it known they had someone like Monica in their ranks, with powers commonly associated with villainy. The Bureau wouldn't care to rehabilitate academy rejects; they'd dismiss them, cast them aside at worst, or make them prove themselves over and over at best. Why would they put the kind of effort I had into helping Monica into other such long shots?

It'd be easy to convince the gang to help. Hadn't Layla said more than once that she'd like the leeway to do things more her own way? The Bureau had improved a lot since Royal Pain's attack on Sky High, but Layla still found a lot of "archaic attitudes" that she resented. Hadn't Will sometimes complained he was tired of getting yanked away from the group to tend to things half a planet away?

I could convince them. Layla would fall all over herself to show the Bureau that people they had rejected could be as useful as any "normal" hero. Zack, Ethan, and Magenta would be happy to score some points for the sidekicks of the world. Hell, we could even take people on preemptive missions against known villains. The former minions would know all the expected safe houses and lairs. We could run things _our_ way, the way they should be run. It'd be easy. Once I'd gotten to the technopaths, they probably wouldn't mind helping out during the inevitable confrontation. They could target some of the mega rays on the worst villains-.

 _What the fuck am I thinking?_ I snapped myself out of my twisted little daydream with a start, reviewing it under more critical mental eyes and not liking what I saw. Where the hell had those ideas come from? Plots to make my own group, agitating against the Bureau, magnifying its faults all out of proportion, thinking about casually mowing people down without warning… Wanting to take things over so I could do things my way. That had been my dad's plan, what had driven him to villainy in the first place.

Someone was messing with my head.

"Warren, you just went as white as a sheet," Monica said, dropping down on her heels in front of me to look me in the face, tugging off her own mask. "What's wrong? I thought you did beautifully in the game, those guys won't doubt you now-."

"Which psychic is on duty now?" I asked urgently.

"Let me think… Brainshock just got off shift, so Mindmelt is on right now. What happened?"

Slowly, haltingly, I began to lay out what had been going on in my head, both on the cage floor and just a few minutes ago. I had been so very, very close to strangling Jack to death I didn't want to think about it. And right now I had almost talked myself into a whole different plan that could have been a total disaster for everyone involved, something that would have destroyed everything.

"That isn't you Warren," she said softly, reaching up to trace her hand through my hair. "I think you're right, the psychics are trying to get to you. They don't like to leave things to chance. But you _know_ that now."

"And knowing is half the battle," I muttered. Monica smiled, and pulled me into a soft kiss.

"Thanks for telling me," she whispered. "And if you have any more urges for world domination, just let me know and I'll help snap you out of them."

I cracked a smile at that and kissed her back, lingering for a long minute before reluctantly pulling away. Ok, so I might be going crazy. But I had help. Help was good. And I now knew I had to watch what I was thinking.

 _Yes, that should be marvelously easy…_ my brain commented brightly. I ignored it.

"I'll do that," I told her, and stood up. "Hey, I need to check on Saurian Lord. He didn't look good at all," I said, my thought kicking back into gear as my adrenaline ebbed.

"Well, he really should be fine," Monica commented, opening the door for me and beginning to lead the way to the infirmary.

"A broken femur isn't 'fine,'" I pointed out. Monica was an EMT, she knew what I was talking about as well as I did. "You know that. Who's been taking care of him for the last hour?"

"Nobody. No one's in the infirmary this time of day-."

"He's been alone all this time? Dammit, he could have been bleeding to death!" I snarled, sprinting the last few corridors to the infirmary.

"Phoenix it's not really that bad-," Monica said behind me, her words cut off by the door when I slammed through it. Looking around, only one of the rooms was occupied, and I bulled open the door.

"Where's the fire?" Saurian Lord demanded, his cheerful voice bright with a very fake Australian accent.

He was sitting on the bed, propped up into place with one leg… while the other was detached from his hip and lying across his lap. The empty hip socket gleamed with metal and plastic, and the broken femur, actually a bent metal rod, was visible through the open panel with which he was tinkering.

"Phoenix!" Monica said a bit sharply, walking through the door at a more sedate pace. "There was no need to rush. I told you it wasn't that bad."

"Heh, had no idea, did 'e?" Saurian Lord said with a snicker, taking out a few tools to poke around inside the metal compartment.

"None. And since he does know what's good for him, he won't say anything to anyone else about it," Monica agreed, giving me a sharp look. I grimaced, but nodded.

"Brady here is a technopath," she explained.

"Lemme 'splain it, iffen you don't mind," he said, still with good cheer. "Hand me that toolbox, would ya? I gotta put a whole new connector rod in 'ere."

Bemused to the extreme, I found the aforementioned toolbox and handed it over.

"Yeah, I'm a technopath. Not a very strong one mind you, not like our Fair Leader." He snickered a bit when he said it, and pulled out a hammer and what looked like a chisel. "Best with connections, specifically mechanical-biological connections. I'm the best cyborg expert you'll find, even amongst your precious Bureau."

I had no answer to that, and he banged loudly on the leg for a few minutes, finally coming up with the bent rod. Examining it closely, he shook his head and dropped it in the toolbox, picking up the new rod before continuing with his story.

"Lost my legs in a car wreck several years back, up to the hips, and shattered my pelvis too. Docs said it was a bloody miracle I wasn't dead, and I'd never leave a wheelchair as long as I lived. Matter of fact, some said I'd never leave a bed. I didn't much care for that, clever lad like me, and so I sets my sights on doing something about it and sent out a few feelers."

He carefully inserted the new rod, and took up several odd-looking tools to start tinkering with it.

"I was an engineer, a good one, and I knew someone at my company was making experimental nanites. Nanobots, cell-sized machines," he clarified. "Royal Pain, bless her pointy little heart, somehow managed to get her hands on some. She brought them to me, and promised me I'd walk again, if I'd work for her. I says yes, I get injected…"

He trailed off for a moment as he finished fiddling with the tools and shut the cover on his leg. With an effort, he shoved it back into place. There was a faint hiss, and then I couldn't even see where the seam was between his skin and the cyborged leg. Taking up his tools again, he popped open another panel on his opposite shin and stared at it fixedly.

"Made myself a new batch of legs, and then started making a whole lot else. I don't have a lot of ranged control, not unless the nanobots are in my machines. And even then they can't be beyond a certain size. Works with the 'raptors, but not with the big 'uns. You figured that out though."

"Didn't save you from Guardian," I pointed out. Brady only smiled.

"Didn't expect it to. That was just for show." He looked at me expectantly, and I asked the necessary questions.

"So why did you let yourself get captured? Why didn't you free Royal Pain?"

"Good questions. Ya see, the Headmaster, he's a bit put out with her. Don't get me wrong, I'm a mite grateful that she helped me out, but she dropped the ball, big time. She recruits some kids for the first few classes, me, Painbreaker, Cutter, Jack, and yeah, that's fine. But she promises the Headmaster a bunch of little babies to raise. A big job, yeah, but once you get the kids learning, they'll do what they're told. Instead, she botches the whole damn thing, and instead of a bunch of easy infants, the Headmaster's left with a school full of half-crazy intractable teens. He had to do a lot of work just to keep things moving along sweetly.

"So Pain's got herself in the joint, totally bollixed this whole thing up, and the Headmaster's about to let her know just out put out he really is. He got to talking, and thought up a plan. Let me and Skybolt get captured. With the right kind of mental implants, we could safely keep us knocked out for weeks, or at least until the prison took the worst of the guard dogs off us.

"After a big of a set time, we'd set off some little devices I had. These legs of mine are X-ray proof, and I can store a thing or two. One to stop the neutralizer field, another to wake us up, and a vial of something fun for Skybolt. Like PCP, but without the hallucinations, makes you stronger than an ox, enough to break through walls. 'Course, you'd have to be crazy to use it; most people it'd burst their hearts. Only Skybolt's nuts enough to take it, and damn if he didn't survive it! I wish I could'a seen people's faces," he said, laughing.

"So… you got captured and broke out without her just to prove you could?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I was neatly delivered hate mail. Right on her doorstep and didn't do a thing to save her. Let her know who's really in charge, and let the Bureau know they put us in jail at their own peril. For all they knew, I could'a smuggled a more powerful anti-neutralizer into Metroplex and freed everyone. Even your Pop."

"Brady, don't play with fire. That didn't go so well for you this afternoon," Monica cut in quickly. I was alternately flushing with rage and blanching with fear, and wasn't sure if I even could talk. "Oh, that was a pretty decent monologue by the way," she added.

Brady laughed and slapped the cover shut on his shin.

"Thank you, thank you, I've been working on that for weeks. Not often I get a captive hero to practice on. It'll be better, of course, when I'm not doing it from a bed," he said, leaping up from the table and grabbing his toolbox as he headed out the door. "Cheers!"

"That sure as hell explains a lot," she muttered, once she heard Brady leave the infirmary.

"This place is unbelievable," I muttered. The academy had sent Son of Silver as a timing test, and had been willing to let two of their own captured for the _sole purpose_ of dissing Royal Pain _in Metroplex_.

"That's putting it mildly. Come on, we'd better get you some food and sleep before you fall on your nose."

Monica guided me back to our room, her arm around me as if supporting me. That wasn't too far from the case. The emotional upheavals, the constant use of my powers, and the fight this evening had nearly wiped me out, and after Brady left, all my energy just evaporated. If anyone was watching us or had contemplated attacking us, I didn't even notice. Monica had me in the room between one fuzzy period and the next, and the next thing I knew I was lying down. Coherence and energy trickled back slowly, and I eventually recovered enough to at least start taking my costume off. The sound of running water from the other room told me Monica had the shower.

I blinked once when I realized I was about to fall asleep in half of my costume, and then must have jumped half a foot when I felt Monica kneel on the bed behind me. Her arms slipped around my bare shoulder and waist, her skin cool and smooth. I wasn't wearing a whole lot right now, and she definitely wasn't wearing much more than me. I quickly grabbed both of her hands in one of mine and settled the rest of my discarded costume firmly in my lap.

"Warren…" she whispered, and I squeezed her hands gently.

"I want to," I said, lifting her hands to my lips and kissing them, turning them over to kiss on the inside of her wrists too, softly as I could, before holding them tight again. She felt fantastic with all of her curves pressed against my naked back, her cool dark hair trailing over my shoulder, the dark walnut of her skin making me look pale. But I definitely wasn't going to move my bunched up costume. No way in hell.

"I want to," I repeated, and then added reluctantly, "But we shouldn't."

Monica relaxed against my back, putting her chin between the crook of my neck and shoulder.

"Are you trying to be chivalrous or practical?" she asked in a demanding tone.

"Yes," I said, and sighed in frustration. She echoed me. "Look, someone is trying to mess with my head, and maybe yours too, just for the hell of it. I love you," I said, turning to look her in the eyes.

"I love you and I want this, but I want to make sure that…" I groped for words. "That it's _me_ and _you_ and not anything else. Does that make sense?"

Monica's eyes searched my own, dark and shadowed, but her expression finally softened.

"If you weren't so damned honest I think I'd be forced to hurt you," she said finally. "And I hate it, but you're right."

"Once we're out of here though…" I trailed off suggestively with a raised eyebrow, and she smirked.

"I'm going to find a very nice hotel room and lock you in with me for a day or a week," she threatened.

"I'm going to sleep on the couch now," I said quickly, before my imagination could run away with me. Monica trailed her hands off of my body, reluctantly, and let me up.

"I love you," she said quietly as I started to bury myself under blankets on the couch. "And I can wait, I promise."

I smiled at her, but couldn't do much more than that. Any more and I'd end up breaking the promise I just made. I turned myself firmly towards the wall, burrowed down in the cushions, and tried to will myself into unconsciousness.

* * *

When I finally fell asleep, the gray lady was waiting for me. This time we were seemingly in a world of gray fog; no floors, no walls, just endless solid gray.

"It's about time," she said with a hint of impatience.

"Who or what are you?" I demanded fiercely. I didn't know what this lady was. She could be a harmless dream or figment, an aspect of my subconscious, or a manifestation of Psion or one of the other psychics.

"Don't you know me?" she asked, sounding oddly hurt. "I'd hoped you'd recognize me. I know you don't know my costume, but surely you know about my dream powers."

"Dream powers," I stated, and my mind suddenly kick-started itself. I hadn't recognized the gray lady last night, but I couldn't help but realize what was going on now. Elise had inadvertently given me the clue. "You're The Dreamer?"

"Very good Warren," she said, nodding. "Yes, I'm your aunt."

"How did… how do I know it's really you?" I asked. It wouldn't have been impossible to find out that The Dreamer was related to the Peacemaker, and by extension, to me. If this was some kind of elaborate mind-game, I wanted proof of who she was.

"Your real name is Warren Nathaniel Peace. You were born on Halloween night, twenty-one years ago, and I wasn't there to see it. No one was. Your mother gave birth alone because we all felt she had betrayed us. Your healing power you discovered for the first time about five years ago, after your friend Zack Cramer fell from a wall into the moat in the Gauntlet at Sky High. You befriended and then fell in love with Monica Keller after meeting her at Medic-Co. And you have a cat named Trixie that you got at an animal shelter that Layla Evans volunteers at," she said evenly.

It was Trixie that finally convinced me. No one knew I had that silly cat but my closest friends and family. Trixie never went outside the house, and I sure hadn't ever entered her in any computer database that could have been hacked.

"It's you," I said. "How are you doing this?"

"My power has a very long reach. I can reach anyone anywhere in the world, but I must know who I'm looking for and approximately where they are. And they and I must be asleep when I use my abilities. It rather limits its usefulness for typical superhero work. But dream travel is one of the very rare powers. So rare that-."

"It can't be blocked by the academy shields," I finished, remembering Elise's comment.

"Exactly. And you're related by blood to me, not to mention I've met you personally before. It makes finding you very easy."

"When the hell did we meet?" I asked. "I don't remember ever seeing you before!"

The Dreamer reached up and swept her veil aside. Underneath was the face of the female nurse that had been my advocate against Dr. Egret, the woman with the kind brown eyes.

"You!" I exclaimed, and then laughed weakly. "No wonder Egret didn't think you could be objective about me."

"Well, we've never met before, so I could hardly be trading on old family history, now could I? Coincidentally, the other man in the room was my brother, the Fearmaster. We're worried about you Warren, that's why I've come to meet you here."

"Does my mom know? Can you tell her I'm ok?" I asked. Having Elise and Tracy here was one thing; they were allies, but couldn't act openly. I had never dreamed of possibly having an open line to the outside while I was in here!

The Dreamer shook her head.

"Warren, I haven't told anyone that I'm in contact with you. Things are moving now, and all actions have multiple repercussions at this point. I have something to show you," she said, and reached forward to grab my hand.

The scene around us swirled, and we were suddenly planted solidly on clear air. We hovered above a room I recognized mostly from descriptions; the Bureau Council Chamber. Tiers of chairs and long desks ringed the room on three sides, while the fourth had a large floor and a long bench and table. The Bureau seal was set into the floor, and flags from many different nations hung on the wall behind the table.

The most important thing about it though was the fact that it was full. The Council was only called with decisions of dire import had to be made. Superheroes had a lot of latitude to do what they felt was right, but if there was a strong difference of opinion on something earth-shaking, the Council would be assembled so the heroes could present a united face to the world.

The Council had only met three times in my lifetime. One had technically happened just before, because it had been the occasion of my father's trial, when they had stripped him of his superhero name and jailed him for the remainder of his natural life. Another had been the initial decision on how the handle the academy, which had forbidden heroes to take the fight to them, the thing I was trying to make them break right now. And this would make the third time.

At the long table sat all the regional directors, including Crimson Tempus, with Halo Star, the director of the entire Bureau, in the center. The tiers of seats around the floor were filled with superheroes, sidekicks, and super teams from all over, murmuring to each other. But it was the people on the floor that really drew my attention. On one side was the entire Battle family, Fire Court in front, with Emberkeeper, Tobias, in the middle.

On the other side were four other people, a motley crew in comparison to the harmonizing robes of state the Battle family sported. In the back was an older woman, over eighty, her long gray hair unbound to her knees. She was wearing a very hippyish outfit of a long skirt and peasant blouse, but she wore it like one would wear armor. The only man was wearing a ragged patchwork outfit, like a scarecrow, with a wide-brimmed hat that threw his face into hard-edged shadow. The third was The Dreamer, somehow down there on the floor and next to me in the air at the same time.

 _Dream logic_ , I thought to myself.

The fourth person was the Peacemaker, in full costume. The other two had to be The Fearmaster and the Heartsinger, my mom's brother and mother. The relatives I'd never known.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

"Warren, listen," The Dreamer admonished, and suddenly I could hear Tobias speaking. "They're talking about you. This Council was called because of you."

"…Will not stand for this! This wishy-washy ambiguity about resolving this situation is just plain cowardice!" Tobias was saying forcefully to the directors. "Phoenix's group, even your golden team of the Commander and Jetstream have been advocating for action instead of sitting on their hands."

"I disagree," Mom cut in smoothly. "The last time this Council assembled it was to agree that no frontal assault on the academy was to take place. The reports of their armaments, even fragmented as they are, indicate how formidable a task this would be. Two mega death rays, heat and freeze rays with enough wattage to even take _you_ out, not to mention the equipment we didn't get a chance to examine. The reason the Council decided against direct action five years ago is because it would be suicide! This atrocity is only the latest in a long line of such things meant to draw us into a conflict we cannot win."

"This is your _son_ ," Tobias interrupted sharply.

"I am very well aware of that Emberkeeper. And the fact that he's your grandson as well has substantial bearing your emotional state and harsh words. I'll overlook that for now. Phoenix would not thank us for throwing our lives away in an ill-conceived rescue attempt."

"We can't just _leave_ him there!" Will said loudly, standing up from his seat in the first row. I could see all of the Champions of Justice now, sitting right behind him, while his parents were right next to him. His dad clamped a hand down on Will's arm and tried to drag him back into his seat. Will tried to shrug him off, and the Commander exerted his strength to bring his son back under control.

Will resisted implacably, and then shrugged his dad off with no real effort. Muted gasps sounded around the room at that casual display of power, and I winced internally.

 _That was not a real good time to assert your dominance Guardian. You're going to need your dad's help,_ I thought. Council decisions were held by vote, and whatever Will wanted to do, he couldn't be ignoring his own father.

Mom didn't betray any reaction to the comment other than a calm and patient expression, but she couldn't have liked that any more than I did, and probably for the same reasons.

"We're not going to 'leave him there' Guardian," Mom said calmly. "But this will have to be done delicately and with tact. Not just by charging blindly in." She was looking at Tobias as she said it, and he bristled viciously, and opened his mouth for another verbal assault.

A pure note, like a songbird's, pierced the atmosphere of growing hostility and tension, and everyone visibly relaxed.

"Let us think with clear heads and open hearts," the Heartsinger said mellifluously. "Everyone is angry at the academy. This is one act of barbarism too far. Action _will_ be taken; we simply need to determine how and when to keep casualties to a minimum."

"Thank you Heartsinger," Halo Star boomed into the quiet. "I think you speak for all of us." The Director's whitefire body (that way from an encounter with an alien meteor) glowed with approval.

Mom closed her eyes for five second, and all of the tension seemed to drain from her body.

"The academy has kidnapped my grandson," Tobias began again, his tone more even. "It's clear they are no longer content to snap up all the first generation children they can find and all the second or further they think they can get away with. Now they think they can take and subvert others at need. They are no longer content to kill us, maim us, injure or even slander us, no, now they want to _corrupt_ us as well! This is a wholly new and unprecedented level of attack. We should not give them the time to break Phoenix further.

"From what we know of both Painbreaker and Judge Libra, the academy could have hardly chosen a better set of individuals to break his will."

"Judge Libra had never show interest in the long-term effects of his powers on his victims. That leaves only Painbreaker. My son is strong; he will not break," Mom said firmly.

"Anyone can break, you damn well know that Peacemaker. If you are too cowardly to want to stop this disgusting, taunting display of the academy's supposed superiority, then _my_ family is not bound by the dictates of this Council. We are independent, and we will take independent action if necessary. There are many here that would agree with me," Tobias said, gesturing at the assembled heroes. A hundred muted conversations broke out at his speech.

"You came here just to stir up support because you know you'll never be able to pull this off on your own. You know what kind of casualties this could inflict and you're ready to go dive into deadly conflict just to salve you precious family pride!" Mom shot back, her back stiff with anger.

"And you refuse to fight for your own family for once, when _this_ time the danger is obvious enough even for _you_ to see. You're just going to stick your head in the sand and hope everything works out for the best," Tobias sneered.

"Warmonger!" the Peacemaker thundered.

"Pacifist!" Tobias roared back, and the floor and chamber erupted in chaos.

The gray fog swept in again, hiding everything from view, and I turned to the Dreamer frantically.

"What the hell? What happened next?" I asked frantically.

"Warren, I just wanted to show you what's at stake here. They won't be able to hold out for long. Emberkeeper is heading up a faction that is gaining strength. Most people are tired of waiting, and they'll admit they want some kind of justice for the people hurt and things destroyed by the academy.

"Others follow the Peacemaker, and they believe her when she warns there will be heavy consequences for attacking now. She insists you have a plan. Do you?" the Dreamer asked.

"I… have a plan. Give me five more days. But then I'll need everyone, every superhero we can spare, to dismantle this place," I said with reluctance. Monica and I would need at least that much time to talk to as many people as we could. If I could survive five more days. That was problematic at this point, but I wasn't going to tell the Dreamer that.

"And what about the lethal defenses?" she asked.

"We'll take care of it," I said sincerely.

"I'll see what I can do," she said, and began to fade out.

"Wait!" I cried. "Can you tell my mom I'm ok? Can you let my friends know what's going on?"

"Warren," she said, with a sad shake of her head. "It's only a dream."

"Wait!" I yelled as she faded faster and faster. _"Wait!"_

* * *

"Warren," Monica said, shaking my shoulder hard as I opened my eyes. "It's only a dream. Wake up."

"Hell," I said, blinking to get the sandpaper feel out of my eyes. "What?"

"You were having a pretty interesting dream. I felt like I was listening to one half of a telephone conversation. Are you all right?" she asked with concern.

"In almost no way," I said groggily.

"That's about normal for here," she said, brushing her hand along my cheek. "Wake up Honeybear, there's no rest for the wicked."

My head screaming protest, I moved, my throat dry and head pounding from that whacked out dream/non-dream I'd had last night.

"Don't call me honeybear," I muttered. Monica only smiled.

It was time to start another day in the academy.


	46. Darkness Before Dawn

Like yesterday, we encountered no one in the halls, though the shouts and screams from around us were as loud as ever. Shutting my ears to the noise was nearly impossible, and only Monica's grip on my arm stopped me from running to someone's rescue when I heard a body hit the wall not twenty feet behind us. The mask-like expression on her face was actually comforting; I knew she was at least as conflicted as I was, and sharing the misery made it marginally bearable.

When we ghosted into the gym, people quietly made room for us to pass, not daring to come within touching distance. But today there was a very distinct change in the mood. While the fundamental miasma of tension, fear, anger, and arrogance was still prevalent, there was an odd relaxation in the air. People moved aside for us, but some of them seemed to move out of the way with a kind of respect, instead of a fearful scramble.

When we wanted to use weight equipment, people seemed to give it up more willingly. Not all of them, but at least two of them were people we had talked to yesterday, and one of them I had healed. And those with them seemed to be influenced by _their_ attitudes.

We'd already managed to make our mark on this place. It was subtle; I only really noticed it because I was so hyper-aware of the people around me for fear that I'd be attacked. It hadn't happened yet, but I refused to be caught off-guard. Would long-time academy residents notice a minute decrease in the general aura of fear today?

While Monica and I went through the usual routine of weights and running, I kept catching people looking at me kind of sideways. It was less a sizing up for an attack and more… something else. I wasn't exactly sure. They were trying to figure out something about me, or Monica, and I didn't know what it was. But for some reason I didn't get the same "sharks smelling blood" vibe off of them that I had yesterday. It was unsettling.

However, I was also noticing some other oddities. Yesterday I had been too distracted by the sense of danger to me personally to notice how Monica was dealing with it. While there were people that moved aside for us, there were also people I realized Monica was avoiding. Some were huge guys or girls with savage scars, other people moved with the kind of grace that reminded me of a snake or a stalking tiger. Though they were out of their costumes, I thought I recognized several people who had been responsible for a fair chunk of the mayhem that had been going on for the last year or so.

These were people even Monica avoided, and for good reason. Though for everyone I'd seen, I hadn't seen one I considered to be one of the most dangerous.

"Where's Silver?" I murmured as Monica started dialing up the firing range. Cutter was at the next range over, flinging her knives in silence. While she seemingly didn't care if we were there or not, I did _not_ want to meet her boyfriend (and thinking of Son of Silver like that made me faintly ill) if he decided to stroll in late.

"Gone, he's got planning to do for his next caper. Cutter's a marksmanship teacher, so she has to stay here," Monica replied just as quietly. "They don't let her out unless she's either leading a group or being supervised."

That both confused me and made sense. Confused me because she seemed to be one of the academy's "success stories." Made sense because if she was as ruthless and violent as they seemed to want their students to be, it would behoove them to keep a very close eye on her, particularly with her powers. It occurred to me that virtually no academy-trained villain went anywhere alone. They always had at least a sidekick, and often went out in groups. It looked like the academy was enforcing their control over their students with a dose of paranoia; you never knew if your teammate was going to betray you to the academy teachers.

* * *

Today was the day we started on the crucial technopaths. Between the morning workout and breakfast, Monica rapidly briefed me on the eight men and women that we'd be trying to convince. Six of them were second-generation and two were first, all of them former techo-geeks: coders, tech-support, programmers, or hackers. None of them were fighters, few had had direct contact with supervillains, and all of them were on the bottom tier of the academy pecking order.

"Royal Pain has very firm ideas about the role of sidekicks and minions. These people barely qualify in that respect. And the technopaths never get trained to fight, never participate in Blood and Bones, and other than sharing food with the rest of the students, never talk much with the rest of the school," she said.

"And no one else thinks its pretty damn weird that people with the founder's power basically get walked on?" I asked. Monica looked troubled.

"I'm going to say something stupid. No one probably thinks its weird because that's the way it's always been. Yes, it is weird," she said with a bit of a shrug. "But compared to a lot of other people here, they have nothing going for them. They're considered to be flakes. For example, Allie claims she got her powers because she slept in a crop circle on a dare and was abducted by aliens."

"Aliens?"

"It happens. And Richard says he merged with his computer after some terrible accident with a ferret. Paula is the niece of Mistress Mechtronica, Travis is the bastard son of The Metal Monstrosity… You get the picture. They're considered jokes, either on their own or by proxy."

"But they're the ones running the defense systems that have managed to hold several hundred superheroes at bay for seven years," I pointed out.

"Designed by Our Sainted Leader, of course," Monica said, with heavy sarcasm.

"The more I learn, the less sense any of this makes," I muttered.

"I understand, I'm thinking the same thing, but we can re-hash this later," Monica pointed out. "We have to get going."

Selecting and bringing the technopaths to the workroom was depressing. All of them tended to find either out-of-the-way corners or to cluster together in small groups for protection. Of the ten minor technopaths in the academy, two were off Monica's list due to the fact they had major connections to some of the more vicious villains, but the other eight might as well have been scared mice.

It didn't help that unlike the others we'd talked to, we didn't want these guys to do anything as simple as run. We needed them to participate in overthrowing the academy. Understandably, that took some convincing.

* * *

"You want me to _what?_ " Allie asked, her pale eyes huge with shock.

Convincing her that I was in control instead of Monica had gone fine. Telling her I'd help her get her powers under her own control hadn't been too bad. She hadn't screamed at either of us; as a matter of fact she seemed terribly relieved that someone actually cared about her welfare. But when I'd talked about taking down the defense systems…

"Take the systems off-line. We can't take the academy down with them up," I explained gently. Allie's mouth opened and closed like a fish.

"I _can't_. I can't do that; everything's coordinated through multiple servers, quintuple password protection, you'd need simultaneous access from at least five terminals-," she started, beginning to hyperventilate.

"What if you had help?" I broke in quickly before she could start crying. Allie's mouth snapped shut and she thoughtfully chewed on a nail. A minute went by, then two, but I didn't push her quite yet.

"We'd need consensus. More than five, minimum. And we definitely couldn't do that from inside the control room, the failsafe systems would fry us if they figured out what we were doing," she said at last, her knife-edge of fear sublimated, for the moment, by the need to solve a half-impossible technical problem. Suddenly I was reminded of Ethan. And I was definitely encouraged by the fact that she said "we."

"And if you had help?" I prompted. Allie's face abruptly crumpled.

"We'd still die doing it! The last act of anyone in this place would be to kill us before they died from rogue weapons-."

"Whoa, whoa, I'm not talking about taking over the damn systems. I don't want to use those weapons on anyone! I just want to disable them," I said quickly.

Allie looked at me strangely.

"If you want out of this place, I'll help protect you and your friends from whatever the academy throws at you. I promise," I said seriously. "I'm not asking you to risk death, I just need your help to throw a wrench in the works. That's it. No mass destruction. If you can just take the systems down…"

"Can you get me that help?"

"I'll try," I said. I wanted to promise her help, but she'd probably had hundreds of promises broken during her time here. I wouldn't do that to her. Instead I held out my hands and let the ember-fire glow along my palms. Swallowing terror, the terrified technopath gave me a nod, and let me close enough to heal her.

* * *

The other technopaths we spoke to were easily as frightened, and more than one broke down in tears before, during, or after my offer, or sometimes all three. But it was the last of our eight possibles that broke down completely.

The others, once they had gotten past fear or relief, had leaned back on the technical problems as comfortable, familiar ground. This last guy, Richard, wasn't interested in solving any kind of technical problem, for us or anyone else. When I'd gently made the suggestion that I'd help him, heal him, and protect him in exchange for _his_ help, he stood up so violently he knocked over the chair.

"You're _insane!_ You can't take on the academy! They'd kill you, all of you, and everyone who helped you. The Headmaster'll figure it out and then kill everyone and no one will escape and we'll all die! I'm not going down with you, I won't, you can't make me, you're sick! I'm going to tell him, he'll have to believe me, you can't do this-!"

Monica uncurled from her corner as Richard's voice reached a pitch and volume that could have cracked glass. This was our Plan B, in case someone hadn't liked our sales pitch. And this guy didn't just not like it, he was about to explode right here and now.

"You really don't think I'd let you go, do you? Fool." Monica's voice was very cold. "Get a hold of yourself."

Richard abruptly stopped the hysterics.

 _That is not a healthy reaction,_ I thought.

"If we really were going to take down the academy, do you think we would ask an insignificant little cretin like you? Idiot. Loyal, but nearly useless. Get out my sight, you disgust me," she snarled. He was gone so fast he nearly left a hole in the door.

"Dammit," Monica said. "Someone must have worked him over recently, he's a wreck. Looks like he was used for target practice."

"Shit," I muttered.

"Still, that's seven," she said, and sighed. "And that's enough. Poor kid," she added, looking at the closed door.

I didn't ask her if she was sure he was going to keep his mouth shut. I was pretty sure he wasn't going to be able to talk for the next two days. He'd been scared out of his mind, but better that than the alternative.

"What about the other two technopaths, the ones we didn't see? Are they going to think it's weird you didn't ask for them too?" I asked instead.

"Not really. I never had to talk to them very often; I didn't need to. Come on, we have more people to get to today."

 _No rest for the wicked._ I took a deep breath and followed her out.

* * *

While the technopaths might have been pretty sad cases, it was some of the odd ones that were the real sob stories. These were the ones that should have been strong enough to be confident villains in their own right, but somehow lacked the hardness of heart to be as cruel as that profession demanded. Some of them already had families or jobs before Royal Pain had found them, like Bruin or Monica. Others had just enough moral fortitude to resist going to the extremes that would have made them effective villains.

It didn't stop me from quietly questioning Monica's sanity when she pulled them for "questioning" though.

"Brittany," Monica said later that day, subtly pointing to a girl in the corner of the cafeteria. The girl's long dark hair was ruthlessly braided back out of her face, her skin pale enough to see the blue veins beneath it, like marble. That wasn't the strangest thing about her though. The strangest thing was that she must have been nearly as tall as Ethan's fiancé Chloe and obviously never met a barbell she didn't like. She was built like a concrete wall, but like most others we had talked to, she had the characteristic defeated slump in her massive shoulders.

"Super strength?" I guessed sarcastically in an undertone.

"No, that's Voidhammer," Monica muttered back. I nearly broke pace and felt a cold knot of fear in my stomach. I should have recognized her from pictures of suspected academy villains, but she'd always worn a heavy metallic super-suit and I'd figured her size was due to the costume.

Voidhammer's power was gravity manipulation, allowing her to fly though anti-gravity or smash someone down with the power of multiple gravities. I knew she'd sent at least six superheroes to the hospital on her own; two of them almost didn't make it. That wasn't unique amongst supervillains, but it was a big step up from the people we had been dealing with so far.

"A little out of our league?" I hissed. Monica's original plan, at least as I understood it, was to get enough of the little guys so that when they ran, the big guys would be left without support. Trying to take on someone of Voidhammer's strength was dangerous. If the Champions of Justice had ever fought her, we would have left her up to Will. I doubted I could stop her with any kind of speed if things got ugly.

I'd considered Monica very lucky that none of our "victims" had thought to use their powers in her workroom when they'd thought to strike back at her. Actually… considering Voidhammer's size, I might have trouble, powers or not. And _that_ was embarrassing, and more than a little frightening.

Monica jerked her head in the negative to my qualms.

"Need her," she said quietly. "I know she wants out."

"How the hell did you keep these guys in line before you-?"

"Broke them?" Monica finished in a bitter undertone. "I'll tell you later."

Voidhammer, or Brittany, somehow seemed to shrink into herself when we got in Monica's workroom. She huddled in the chair and nailed her eyes to the floor, not daring to meet our eyes. But when Monica went to her corner and I started to explain that I wanted to help, she snapped her eyes up to look at both of us. Her eyes were wavering, almost wild, and I tried to get between her and Monica without being too obvious about it. I'm pretty sure I failed at that though.

"You've really changed," Brittany said to Monica, her voice very soft and hesitant.

That was weird. Usually no one wanted to say anything to Monica unless it was to yell at her.

"Yes. I'm still changing," Monica replied, barely looking up.

"You're really sorry about what you did?"

"Yes." No qualifications, no explanation, but maybe it was better that way.

"Why are you doing this?" Brittany asked me, her pale eyes locking with mine.

 _That_ was a loaded question. I tried to answer it as simply as I could.

"Because it's the right thing to do," I said. I could have said I was doing it for myself, to prove my worth as a hero. I could have said I was doing it for Monica, to destroy the place that had twisted and hurt her. I could have said I was doing it for all of my friends that had been hurt by this place, or for all the citizens that had suffered harm. I could have said I was doing it for every reluctant villain in here, but I didn't. She didn't need a speech on my state of mind. She just wanted truth. And cliché as it was, it _was_ the right thing to do.

"Why are we worth so much to you? I'm no citizen, no innocent. Why risk everything to help us?" she whispered.

"Because he's a hero, Brittany. And the rest of us are trying to be," Monica said.

Silence reigned for another long second as Brittany stared at Monica like she'd just grown a second head. Finally she turned back to me.

"If you think you can help me…"

"You're not beyond hope, ok? Don't think that you are," I said fiercely, letting the ember-fire warm my hands. Shuddering slightly in reaction, Brittany slowly straightened up in her chair and let me near her.

 _Damn…_ Looking at her life-fire, I could see she was bound down even tighter than Bruin. When I cut the bindings, I was jolted out of my trance as I found myself slammed against the ceiling, which had suddenly become the floor, to my perspective. Brittany gasped and coughed, her pale face flushed red, one hand outstretched where she had pushed me away. And up. She blinked at me when she realized what she'd done.

"Sorry!" she exclaimed and let gravity slowly reverse itself. I was too busy trying to hold onto my food to make any comments, reassuring or otherwise.

"It's ok," I said, once my feet were firmly back on the floor. I definitely wasn't eager to experience that again anytime soon. No wonder Voidhammer had taken out six heroes on her own; just reverse gravity for a few seconds, then reverse it again and let them fall. Even if you could fly, how could you possibly be prepared for something as fundamental as gravity to just stop working?

"You'll be fine," Monica was saying to her, while I was trying to get my equilibrium back. "You're one of the faster people here; you'll get away easily. It'll be fine."

 _When had Monica suddenly become a counselor?_ That hadn't exactly been part of the plan…

"I-. Thank you," Brittany said, and made a hasty escape. When the door shut, Monica let out an uncharacteristic Zack-like whoop and pumped her fist in the air.

"God, I'm glad she's on our side," she said by way of explanation. "She has one of the widest area of effect powers in the academy. Getting her out of the fighting really helps even the odds."

The switch from confidant to tactical officer gave me mental whiplash. Some of that must have shown on my face, because Monica smiled a little at my confusion.

"I meant all of what I said. She wants something to believe in. I tried to make her believe in this place… And now she believes you. That's her weakness; she just needs someone strong to follow. When she didn't have that… she'd go out on missions, fail them pretty spectacularly, and then she'd end up here." Monica sighed slightly and turned away from me, her voice going flat. "She had sessions with me about two times a week until they found her someone to team up with."

"How did you keep her from body-slamming you into the ceiling?" I asked. That peculiar flat tone was enough contrition for me; I knew exactly what she meant, and how sorry she was for it. I didn't need her to agonize over the specifics of each and every person, not here, not now.

I'd hit a nerve with that question though, by the way Monica's shoulders stiffened.

"Preemptive strikes," she said simply. "I got them first, so they'd never think about getting me. I had to think of my own skin."

"I think I knew that," I said softly. It was the only thing that made sense really. It wasn't like there were restraints in here, or that they'd spare someone to act as Monica's bodyguard. How else could she have kept herself in one piece?

"I'm sorry Warren."

"That's ancient history, right?"

She smiled. "Right."

* * *

That evening, other than having to endure Blood and Bones, things were relatively quiet. I wasn't asked to fight, so all I had to do was to hold onto my temper and stomach contents through the vicious gladiatorial display. After using my powers through most of the afternoon, dealing with the pounding sound and emotional chaos of Blood and Bones was a torture, but I managed to grit my teeth and bear it.

Only two people waited for me in the infirmary afterward, both with broken bones from capers gone wrong earlier that day. Word had already gotten around about what'd happened to Ash; no one so much as said a word in my presence.

It turned out that was for the best, because I needed all of my wits for later. That night, the Dreamer was waiting for me when I fell asleep.

* * *

"I'm sorry I had to leave so abruptly last night Warren-," she started, but I cut her off, more interested in information than apologies. It wasn't polite, but I wasn't worried about appearances right now.

"Did you tell my mom that I'm ok? What about my friends?" I asked urgently.

The Dreamer looked troubled.

"What can I tell them Warren? Would your friends believe me with what little proof I can bring?"

"Why wouldn't they?" I demanded.

"Your friends are on Fire Court's side. Or at least Guardian is, and the rest of the Champions follow him as a sign of confidence in their leader. On our side are most of the older heroes, but the younger generation is quite effective at stirring people up. They are not eager to hear from me," she said.

The thought that they wouldn't believe her hadn't even crossed my mind. I'd managed to divide Will against his parents, all of my friends against their mothers and fathers… The Law of Unintended Consequences had once again reared its ugly head.

"But they know my mom, they know she doesn't lie-. _She_ believes you, doesn't she?" I asked the last in an alarmingly pathetic tone of voice.

For an answer, the gray fog around us swirled and then cleared, showing both the Peacemaker and the Dreamer side-by-side on a carpeted floor, the Fearmaster and the Heartsinger looking on. I watched Mom's face twist suddenly in pain, and then suddenly relax. Tears began to slip down her cheeks as she slowly woke up. The Dreamer looked at her and reached out a hand in comfort.

"You were right all along Joy. Forgive us for doubting you," she said. "If I hadn't seen into his mind myself, I wouldn't have believed it either."

Considering the Peace family hadn't believed anything Mom had done for nearly twenty years, I was a little surprised at the breakthrough. But just a little. Nothing brought a family together like a crisis.

"I know it here," Mom said softly, touching her forehead. "And I love my son, but that's why I wanted you to see for yourself and be sure. I know Monica loves him dearly, but I know, and know well, that love doesn't preclude evil and irrational acts."

"Thank you for trusting me," the Dreamer said just as quietly. "He's just like you Joy. He's going to burn himself to the bone to see the academy free, or die trying. And so will she."

The gray fog swirled in again and left just the Dreamer standing before me. I swallowed thickly, reaching out for the vision of my mother as it faded. It had only been a few days, but I missed her so badly… Her, my friends, even my cat.

"Why-," I started and had to pause for a second to get past a lump in my throat. "Why can't you just show the Council what you showed Mom about me? Then they'd know and -."

The Dreamer shook her head sharply.

"Do you know what I do for a living Warren? When superheroes are unconscious or comatose from physical or mental trauma, I go into their dreams and get them back to the waking world. And for that I delve into the very deepest parts of the mind, where reality barely matters and everything is in shapes and colors. What I see is very symbolic, but not necessarily real. That is what I am known for."

Her tone was just very slightly self-pitying and it pissed me off.

"So fucking what? _Show_ them that you can do more!" I said forcefully.

"You're _related,_ Warren. With you, with Joy, my mother, my brother, everything comes through crystal clear. With others, not as much. I could tell them what I know, I could show them the emotions through their dreams, but belief is a fragile thing," she explained.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I growled.

"I don't like it any better than you do. But what am I supposed to do? Ask each member of the Council if I can invade the deepest part of their dreams to show them the truth? They _know_ what I do to the injured, and it's _extraordinarily_ intimate, mentally. I'd see an awful lot that most people would rather keep hidden," she said, her tone sharp.

 _And I didn't get a choice?_ I thought, but didn't say. If she hadn't made contact, my mom would be totally clueless about whether or not I was even alive, let alone sane. I'd bared my soul to her all my life; I'd take this in stride.

"Besides, you want four more days of this insanity to get your plan to work. If they knew that you were honestly putting your life and sanity on the line like this, they'd be in here so fast… I trust you when you say you have a plan. You asked me for delay, and that's what I'm doing. Your mother is extraordinarily good at playing one side against another when she needs to, and that's what she's doing for your sake," she said.

"Without lying?" I asked. How could she keep two factions of superheroes against each other without lying through her teeth about what was really going on in the academy? Mom _never_ lied.

"Joy once told me that diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a big stick. She's a _diplomat,_ she's used to making the truth work for everyone. I used to watch her work, before you were born, sometimes for days on end. If anyone could play the Council against each other and still have them united at the end, it's her. Most won't even realize they've been manipulated until weeks later, if they even think about it."

"That's kind of twisted…" I said without thinking. I hadn't quite realized Mom's powers could work with that kind of subtlety, like the academy psychics.

"So is what you're doing. The Council just found out that about six villains that should have been out for weeks due to their injuries were back in the field today. Do not preach about morality to me," she said.

"If you're digging so far into my head than you know why I had to do that," I said tersely.

The Dreamer folded her arms and drummed her fingers on her elbow for a minute. Then she nodded sharply.

"This is not making Joy's job any easier you realize," she said.

"There are several hundred people in here that have been tortured mentally, physically, and emotionally every single day for _years_. We've got some of the most violent villains we've ever seen come from this place, and there'll be more every single year until we destroy it from the inside out. They're _killing_ people in here!" I cried. Stoicism was crumbling in trying to make her understand why this was so important.

Maybe it was just because I'd seen it first hand, and unlike Monica, this was a much more extreme culture shock for me. I didn't want any of my friends to get hurt by those damned defense systems, but nearly anything short of that was worth the price of destroying this place.

"You can see what I've seen? Then look for yourself!" I nearly shouted.

The Dreamer bowed her head.

"I've already seen. But I wanted to make sure _you_ see as well, and that you're doing this for the right reasons," she said softly. "You might not see me for a few days, but trust me, we're doing everything we can. Go back to sleep Warren, you have a long few days ahead of you."

* * *

When Monica woke me up this time, she had the same puzzled expression on her face that she'd had yesterday, wondering what in the world I had been dreaming about. Apparently I had been talking in my sleep. Again. That was a very bad habit to get into around here.

"More strange dreams?" she asked.

"Not just dreams," I admitted a bit reluctantly. Monica waited impatiently. "Do you know anything about my mom's family?"

Monica blinked twice and then I could see the lightbulb go on in her head.

"The Dreamer," she breathed. "That's what's been going on, right?"

I gave her the short version of the last two nights, and watched her expression go from hopeful, to pissed-off, to resigned.

"So we're on our own, just like we thought we'd be," she sighed. "I don't want to say thanks for nothing but…"

"Yeah," I said shortly. My head was pounding, and I wasn't up for any other kind of extended discussion without coffee. Monica abruptly channeled my pain to her and arched her eyebrow.

"I don't want you accidentally flambéing someone because you're in a bad mood," she said by way of explanation. "Let's go."

* * *

We managed to get through most of the day without serious incident. Right up until Blood and Bones, that was. I hated that part of being in the academy more than any other. The noise, the blood, the fighting, everything conspired to rub my nerves raw.

I'd been trying to concentrate on anything but the carnage on the floor when the next pair of fighters was called.

"Painbreaker!" the ref called, snapping my attention to the present.

Monica didn't even flinch when her name was called, but I did. That's all I dared do, and I mentally cursed the fact that I couldn't even offer her my help. I didn't dare draw any attention to myself, mostly because I didn't think I could stand another round of Blood and Bones without doing something I'd regret for the rest of my life.

If Monica had any of the same qualms, she didn't show a thing. With her face covered with her mask and her costume hiding everything else, it was easy to be inscrutable.

"Fallout!" the ref boomed, calling out her "sparring partner," and a green-glowing man in an equally garish green costume joined her on the floor. His super-suit was covered with radiation symbols, making his lethal powers very clear.

 _Now why the hell would they do that?_ I thought. Monica usually didn't participate in these fights. Fear kept me still in my seat as the possibility of betrayal crossed my mind. First thing though, Monica had to survive this fight.

Fallout's radioactive blasts were lethally destructive; the last superhero to defeat him, no more than two weeks ago, was still in treatment for radiation poisoning. It occurred to me suddenly that I had healed more villains that heroes. I resolved to change that situation if I ever got out of here. _When_ I got out of here, I corrected myself.

On the floor, Fallout's sidekick Lead Balloon was invoking his own powers to protect the audience. It was less out of compassion and more from the need to not disable or kill the entire academy with a misplaced blast. The elusive Headmaster might be a cruel son of a bitch, but he wasn't a complete idiot.

" _Blood and Bones!"_

The screaming jarred my attention back to the match. Fallout didn't bother to throw out a quip or make any extravagant displays like Cowboy Jack had. He just unleashed blast after blast of glowing energy right at Monica. _She_ started ducking, dodging, and evading around his blasts with astonishing speed, but coming to a complete and utter halt in between each one, as if she didn't intend to expend an iota more energy on him than she had to. Predictably, this pissed Fallout off.

Roaring loud enough to nearly overpower the frenzied crowd, he dove for her, hands glowing yellow, eyes blazing with hatred. The sound reached a crescendo, and I realized I was screaming wordlessly with the rest of the academy. Fallout hurled himself toward her over a park bench, and Painbreaker moved like a striking snake, hands flashing down over his neck, ripping his costume and slashing through his skin with her finger-knives.

"Blood, blood, blood!" they screamed, as Monica raised her bloodied hands. She seemed blissfully unaffected by the crowd's chant, and for a long, black second, I hated her for her calm in the face of the storm. Reason returned a few moments later as I reined in my unruly thoughts.

 _They're messing with your head, they're messing with your head,_ I repeated to myself over and over, using that as a mantra to center myself. Well, as much as was possible when I just wanted to lash out at everyone around me. It was very hard to maintain my mental walls in here, and flat-out impossible to keep them up during Blood and Bones. After using my powers on all those people in the morning, I was emotionally vulnerable to psychic meddling. And since I healed other injured supervillains afterward, evenings were really bad for me. A pounding headache and a hair-trigger temper were starting to become "normal."

When I moved through the crowd as Blood and Bones was dismissed, it became obvious how much my control had slipped. The expression on my face alone was clearing a path through the press of bodies, and it was very hard to not clear it faster with fire. When I reached Monica, she took one look at me and hauled me off into a quiet closet to get a handle on my temper.

"Fallout pissed someone off," she said conversationally. "He needed to be shamed; that's why I was called." I was pacing in the small space, giving off enough heat to make temperatures soar to tropical levels, blood roaring loud enough in my ears that I barely heard her. Monica shoved back her mask to try to cool herself down. "The last time they made me fight…"

A quiet stream of half-heard remembrances became background noise until my heart eventually calmed down. I should have been uneasy, at least, that things had gotten this bad so fast. But right then I was grateful I hadn't hurt anyone out of pique. When I stopped pacing, Monica finally stopped talking.

"Are you back on Planet Sane?" she asked. A nod from me and she sighed with relief. "Good. Really, if I keep dragging you off into closets, people are going to start talking."

It wasn't even that funny a comment, but I laughed at it anyway, finally throwing off the worst of my anger.

"How can you handle this?" I asked, pulling off my helmet and bringing my temperature back down to normal (at least for me).

"Experience," she said simply, tugging off her bladed gloves and gently touching the side of my face. "I knew what this was going to be like. It's hard, it's damn hard, but I knew what I was getting myself into. And it's my self-appointed job to keep you safe so you can do _your_ job. And trust me, you're doing great so far."

"So far."

"Don't jinx it," she said sternly.

* * *

Fourth day in, I wasn't the only one to have noticed the difference in the "air," so to speak. When Monica and I were at the bench press that morning, Meduka strode over to us, an odd look on his face. Monica only raised an eyebrow when he came within speaking distance, but he didn't shy off.

"Hey, wanted to talk to you for a sec," he said, his voice low and hard to hear over the yelling from some of the people on the floor.

"What's so important that you have to interrupt our workout and yours?" she asked mildly. This time Meduka didn't flinch at the implied rebuke, and I mentally revised my opinion of the guy upward.

"You've been doing some good work. I had at least a dozen of my trouble students come in voluntarily for extra practice," Meduka said, one eyebrow quirking slightly in question.

"I'm more of a novelty; it gets a bigger reaction after three years without 'persuasion,'" Monica said smoothly.

"They're pretty serious about wanting to get tougher. I mean it; they weren't like this even for Cutter, and she's ten times worse than you ever were. Helps you don't leave them damaged for weeks afterward," he pointed out.

I remember Monica saying that Cutter might have filled in for her in the torture department while she was spying on me, and I think I lost some color thinking about it. _Damn, those people might have been actually_ glad _to see Monica, because at least with her they know the pain will stop when they leave the room._

Yet another deep level of wrong to lay against this place. Not that it needed it.

Monica's back was tensing up as she was talking and after a second, it penetrated what Meduka's comment could mean. Was he figuring out _why_ previously reluctant students would suddenly ask for more practice? Had he gotten information out of someone? Was this just a comment or a subtle warning?

In some ways, Meduka was a little like one of Monica's physical counterparts. She was supposed to force behavior into a particular mold; he did the same to bodies. And nothing Monica had said made me think that he was on her mental list.

Had we just blown our cover?

"I have my talents. I didn't spend my time idly," Monica said non-committally, her tone indicating that she was done with the conversation.

Frustration crossed Meduka's face at Monica's casualness and alarm bells sounded in my head. _He knows_ something, _but what?_

"Ash was pretty impressed with Phoenix," Meduka said. "Last time he broke an arm he was out six weeks."

"Ash, impressed? Are we talking about the same Ash? God's gift to the world?" Monica asked with a hint of incredulity.

"Yeah, he was really vocal about it at karate practice," Meduka said, sounding amused. Monica rocked back on her heels a bit, shock in her eyes covered by a mask-like expression.

There was something going on here that I wasn't picking up on. Subtle body language, slang, code phrases, knowing the people in the academy better than I did, Meduka and Monica were having a whole separate conversation that I wasn't privy to, and it was making me nervous as hell.

"He shouldn't be so concerned about me simply doing my duty," Monica said flatly, a finality in her voice that sent a brief chill down my spine.

"Fine, whatever. I just like what you two are doing. Ass," he said the last under his breath as he turned away. From the repressed twitches in Monica's hands, she wanted to grab him and demand that he apologize… or explain. She did neither, and in two breaths Meduka was back in the crowd.

Turning back to me and setting the final plate on the bar, I could see she had lost most of her color as blood drained out of her face. A slightly shake of her head silenced me before I could even ask any questions. She didn't respond to a single whispered comment of mine until we were back in the safety of her room.

"What the hell is going on?" I got out finally when we were alone.

"He knows what we're doing. Not details, but he's figured something out and he and Ash want in."

"Fuck," I swore. "Goddamn it, we were so fucking close!"

"Wait, hang on, we're not dead yet. If he wanted to screw us over, he'd already have taken it to one of the teachers or the Headmaster. I believe he thinks I'm working on some kind of coup… He wants in on the spoils," she explained. "This isn't as bad as we think it is."

"Great," I muttered. "So how bad is it?"

"If he keeps trying to angle for himself, not very. If he decides to save the status quo, extremely."

"What are the odds either way?"

Monica smiled a little and I relaxed a fraction.

"If Meduka weren't a self-centered son-of-a-bitch he would have never gotten as far as he has, considering his curse. Just hope he keeps being greedy."

"And if he doesn't?" I asked pointedly. Monica looked troubled.

"Then we're really screwed. I'm not a mind reader, and I can't just go drag him into my workroom and get the truth out of him. It's only a few more days; we just have to keep a lower profile," Monica explained. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I was very proud of her that she hadn't considered using her powers on him to get information. _I_ was a little tempted at this point, just out of fear, but _she_ hadn't said it.

"How? Go ask the people we've talked to to keep their mouths shut?" I asked.

"I don't know! There are only so many plan B options we have in here. We're going to have to take this on faith, because I am out of brilliant ideas!" she nearly-shouted.

"Ok, ok," I said quickly, and backed down. Both of us were dancing on eggshells around each other due to our touchy moods, and I didn't need to provoke myself any more. The academy was doing plenty of that for me.

* * *

An incident later that night brought more evidence to support Monica's assessment of Meduka's odd request. I'd just finished up in the infirmary, sending out the latest patient (five badly smashed ribs and some other internal damage from being caught under a collapsing wall) when Cowboy Jack stomped in, scowling furiously. Catching sight of Monica as we were about to leave, he planted himself solidly in front of her.

"Painbreaker, I have problems," he announced. I was very, _very_ glad right then that none of the gang was here. Zack or Magenta, especially Magenta, wouldn't have been able to resist an opening like that. Monica only raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"You don't seem to be seriously hurt."

"Goddamn it, I'm not talkin' about that! My hoss been actin' up. He's all skittish and ornery and I don't have the time t' straighten him out," Jack said, crossing his arms belligerently.

"If you can't control your own sidekick, that's not my problem," Monica said evenly.

"Yeah, it _is._ You took him in fer an eval not more'n three days ago. Now, he's usually nice and quiet after things like that, but he's been ornerier than evah these past few days and I'm sick of it!" he shouted.

"He was fine with me. Perhaps you're just paranoid," Monica said pleasantly, as if dismissing the whole thing.

"Don't play those mind games with me!"

"I don't need to. If you can't keep Nightsteed in line after I've checked up on him, then the failing is with you, not him."

Jack's mouth snapped shut at that subtle threat. A villain that couldn't control his sidekick could suffer a very cruel role-reversal when other villains found out about it.

"Go play with your rope Jack," she finished. From the look on Jack's face, he wasn't done with her yet, but also wasn't willing to push things right now. He stomped out with ill-grace, spurs jingling.

Back in the room, I actually saw some real fear on Monica's face.

"We've got to move fast, we don't have much time."

* * *

With cracks starting to appear in our carefully crafted façade, on the fifth day Monica opted for a grueling pace of "talks," praying we'd be able to get the number of people we needed before something worse happened. We were close, very close, but the drain on me was definitely taking its toll. I was starting to get cold toward the end of the day, a danger sign I couldn't ignore, and my temper, long frayed with witnessing cruelty and being unable to stop it, snapped shortly after Blood and Bones. Again.

I'd been yet again forced to watch the strong beat up on the weak, to watch blood fly and bones break for cruel entertainment and "training." And because of all the people we'd talked to today, the philosophy of the academy was eating at me. Three more people had had complete breakdowns in the workroom today, and I'd had to physically restrain one girl until Monica could frighten her into silence.

It really made me think, realizing how close so many of the others were to that kind of reaction. The academy's main philosophy, if it had one, was to make "better" supervillains. But with all the potential mental breakdowns within its walls, I couldn't believe that this place was still standing. Not to mention all the strange tactics the academy villains had been using against us in the last few years, with their endless "testing" and prodding to no visible end. Brooding on that, and combining it with the fear of discovery and the whole stew of crap the psychics were probably throwing at me, I nearly exploded right in the stands. None of this made any sense!

Ignoring a few snickers and significant glances, Monica hauled me off to the supply closet again, managing to get the door shut before I started a rant that had been running through my mind for the last hour.

"Ok, screw this shit. Monica, this just doesn't make any fucking sense!" I said heatedly. "Just seeing these guys today… Look, instead of the academy pressing their damn advantage when they should have, when we're still just figuring out that there _is_ an academy, the Headmaster holds everyone back, and _we_ end up having enough time to get ready. They test and test and test us, but don't seem to _use_ what they learn half the time. Sure, everyone gets away fast enough to avoid getting in jail, but a quarter of the capers and robberies are abandoned because of that.

"Almost half the students here don't really want to be here, and a quarter of _those_ hate this place and never would have been villains in the first place if they hadn't been forced. This isn't just being cruel, this is being _stupid._ This isn't the work of a criminal mastermind; it's the work of some kind of schizophrenic sadist. How the hell has this place managed to keep going all this time without imploding from the inside?"

Monica clicked off the light in the closet as my rant rose to just short of Boomer-volume and used the disorientating affect of darkness to slide close to me and press both of her hands along the pressure-points on my wrists. It wasn't hurting yet, but the promise of pain stopped me in mid-sentence.

"Paranoia does not become you Warren," she said softly. I took a deep breath and slammed my head back against the wall. It didn't hurt much because I still had my helmet on, but it cleared my head.

Fuck it, I _knew_ how this place was affecting me and I hadn't caught myself in time. Each time it was getting harder and harder to remember what was real and what the psychics were forcing on me. I found myself hauling myself back from strange mental tangents at least three times a day, but this time it had nearly taken me along for the ride…

"Listen to me. You know why the academy waited, why this place is designed to create the most psychotic and desperate people it can. This place is a weapon, an instrument of revenge. It's meant to create as much chaos, pain, and injury as possible, to lure as many superheroes here as possible, so they can all _die_ as soon as possible! It's a giant death trap, and Royal Pain obviously did not care what happened to the children in her care as long as she was able to wipe out a whole generation of superheroes in the process. And the Headmaster might not care about Royal Pain anymore, but he sure as hell isn't above fulfilling her agenda.

"Now, calm down."

I took five deep breaths and let the tension slowly drain out of me, as much as it could.

"I'm all right," I said finally, and she let me go, turning the lights back on.

"I expect the same from you if that happens to me, got it?"

"Promise," I said grimly.

* * *

The sixth day in the academy and I was wondering if I was going to go completely insane before Monica and I could put the final phase of our plan in action. I was finishing each day cold and exhausted, emotionally drained and uncertain. The mood swings I'd noticed in the people we'd talked to I'd also noticed increasingly in myself. I'd go from fairly happy about how the general plan was going to depressingly uncertain, from contemplative about one hurdle or another to furious. I'd flared up more than once when I'd been angry, and I damn near backhanded some kid that didn't clear the bench press fast enough this morning.

My mental walls were in ragged tatters, and I considered it a minor miracle that I hadn't gone postal on any of the people I'd talked to in Monica's workroom. Fatigue hadn't let me keep my mental walls up consistently, and trying to monitor my thoughts against manipulation was _hard_ , mostly because I was starting to wonder if I could tell the difference between deliberate manipulation and fatigue-induced randomness.

Oddly enough, the two places where I _weren't_ having mental breakdowns were Monica's workroom and the infirmary. Healing took too much concentration to allow any kind of intrusion, but outside of there, I was fair game.

Today we'd managed to hit our threshold for the number of people we needed to stage a successful revolt. If we'd have any kind of luck, the superheroes would stop debating and hit the academy within the next two days. The fact that I'd healed two dozen villains should have convinced the heroes they _had_ to get me out, if nothing else had. And if the Dreamer was to be believed, then the heroes should be here tomorrow. I was starting to even doubt my own dreams though, and had to face the fact that I might get no warning at all before the attack.

Having to watch Blood and Bones that night was perhaps the hardest thing I'd done yet. The constant crashing noise was pure hell on my mental state, and the vicious violence on the floor made me simultaneously furious and nauseous. I had a splitting headache before the "game" was half over, and by Monica's stiff posture, I thought she probably knew it too. Irritably I wondered why she hadn't channeled the pain to her, like she had before, and spent five minutes thinking about trying to get the ref's attention so I could challenge Painbreaker before reason slammed me over the head.

It was a measure of how routine this had become in that I had been thinking about trying to fight my girlfriend. That in and of itself was frightening though. I tried to calm myself as much as I could, reasoning that she was picking up on the pain of most of the arena, and my headache couldn't be anywhere near the level of what was going on down on the floor.

 _Just calm the hell down Peace. Calm. The fuck. Down,_ my brain told me sternly. Meditating through the noise of Blood and Bones was nearly impossible, but trying kept me from attempting murder in the stands. By the time the matches were done, I had gotten some semblance of control back, but even Monica's inscrutable mask looked concerned when we started to file out.

"You look like hell," she murmured. I was about to come back with a snappy comment when someone called out behind us.

"Hey Painbreaker!" I heard behind us. Cutter suddenly appeared in front of us in a flash of light, a bright, psychotic grin on her face.

 _I do_ not _need this right now._ Why the hell was Cutter choosing to talk to us _now_ when we had been here for a week already?

"Say nothing, follow my lead," Monica murmured _sotto voce_ to me. "Cutter," she said evenly, in a more normal tone.

"Nice job nabbing hot stuff here. He behaving?" she asked.

"Well enough."

"Good to see you actually doing work for once. You have a nice _three-year_ vacation?" Cutter snarked.

"Not really," Monica deadpanned.

Cutter snorted in laughter and looked me over in an uncomfortably predatory way.

"Well, if you got him under control, mind if I borrow him for a while? He still owes me for the burned wrists." She looked right at me, still grinning disturbingly. "Took me three months to get my wrist shots back after you burned me. Least you can do is make up for it."

 _Fuck you,_ I snarled mentally. _On second thought, no, never mind, not in a million years._

"Cutter, it's not nice to play with your food," Monica remarked.

Cutter broke into peals of laughter at that, and had to put her hand against the wall to keep herself from collapsing, gasping for breath as she wound down.

"Oh man, Painbreaker you got yourself a sense of _humor_ out there. Never thought I'd hear you make a joke," she snorted.

"I have my talents." Monica was keeping her voice smooth and even, almost mechanical.

"Seriously, you can spare him for an hour or two right?" she said, taking a few steps forward. Casually Monica put herself between Cutter and I.

"Cutter, Phoenix is a very valuable academy asset-."

"Don't I know it," Cutter murmured, eyeing my ass.

I kept myself from punching her by a thin margin.

"-And I don't need you using him for target practice," Monica finished, as if she hadn't even heard Cutter's comment.

"Please, I have something else in mind," she said with a toss of her head.

Monica's face got very hard as she regarded Cutter as if she were a lowly worm.

"Where I'm from it's considered polite to stick to the man you're with," she said in same maddeningly calm voice.

"Who are you, my mom?" Cutter demanded, the grin on her face becoming more brittle.

"Since I didn't drown you at birth, no."

Cutter's face darkened with anger.

"Shut up! Whatever I do it's none of your damn business."

"It's my business because I'm in charge of him. Now shove off. He's useful to the academy, and I'm not going to let you damage him because he made noise at the wrong time. You like it quiet, don't you?"

Cutter's face started to turn purple.

"Shut the hell up!" she screamed, but Monica was relentless.

 _I really hope you know what you're doing Monica…_ I thought, a roaring in the pit of my stomach. My hands were hot and I was holding on very hard to not burst into flames, tense and ready to move to put myself between them. I had no idea why Monica was provoking Cutter so much, but I was scared Cutter would go for the kill after taunts like that. She'd "killed" Penny for less. Hell, she'd "killed" Penny for fun.

"If I were involved with Silver, I would think twice about messing around. He's a little too jealous to be screwing the prisoners for fun," Monica mocked, and Cutter snapped.

"You goddamned bitch!" she snarled, drawing a dagger and slashing at Monica. Monica moved in the same instant, faster than I'd though possible, sidestepping the blade and coming up under her guard, taking only a shallow slash across her scalp for her trouble. Monica's hand flashed out and found purchase on Cutter's face, her finger knives digging into the flesh of her cheek, blood beginning to trickle down as her skin tore.

"I did more than get a sense of humor out there Cutter. I grew a spine," Monica said in a tone velvet with malice. Cutter sank to her knees as Painbreaker invoked her powers hard, darkening the air around them, a few strangled cries issuing past her lips.

"I am tired of taking your shit. I took it for years while I was here, and I will not take it anymore. You will keep your hands to yourself, you skanky ho, or I will redefine your world in living pain. How would you like to experience those burns of yours again, this time with my powers invoked to heighten them?" she asked in the same frighteningly deadly calm voice. A sideways glance from Monica told me what was expected of me, and I let the heat go, overpowering the cold feeling in my gut. The roaring emotional storm I had been experiencing for nearly a week was reaching a crescendo.

 _I'm supposed to stop this…_ I whispered mentally. _Refuse and die. Give in and give up. Shit!_

Cutter lost most of her color at Monica's threat as I powered up a little, letting her see the flames dancing on my fingertips.

"Do we have an understanding?" Monica asked.

Cutter nodded, Painbreaker's finger knives pulling in her flesh. Monica abruptly released her and powered down. Cutter vanished down the hall, and was out of sight in nothing flat. Monica looked around at everyone else in that corner of the gym with a simple expectant expression. "Anyone else?" it said, as clearly as if she had spoken. Everyone became intensely interested in the walls, floor, or ceiling, and Monica calmly walked us away, a triumphant expression her face.

I waited until we had reached our room before talking, mostly because I didn't trust myself to say anything without yelling, but my mind was going a million miles an hour. Any brooding over possible thought manipulation was gone, and my thoughts felt clear, if conflicted.

For once though, Cutter had actually faced the consequences for her cruelty and selfish thoughtlessness, and Monica had stood up for herself against her. But it hadn't been right. And I knew it was wrong that I'd enjoyed seeing Cutter being forced to back away. It was also probably bad that Monica had damn near gotten off on being able to use her powers like that. She had told me she enjoyed using them that way, perverse as it was, and she hadn't been able to do that very often for the past few years.

It made her feel powerful, in complete control, for the first time in a long time. She'd just spent most of a week getting emotionally beaten up by her former victims, and oddly it was good to know she wasn't a glutton for punishment. Hearing her saying she deserved getting yelled at was responsible and showed fortitude, but only a saint could be completely forgiving under these circumstances.

It wasn't right or fair, what we had just done, but some of my unease and fear were fading before the feeling that Cutter wouldn't dare touch us again… and if any of the stronger students had felt like she did, they wouldn't do anything after that demonstration. I didn't dare think how tomorrow would have gone if Cutter had gotten her way. It'd be like declaring open season on me. I'd have been eaten alive.

On the other hand…

That was exactly the kind of thing I was supposed to be stopping. If I had come across something like that sick little scene as Phoenix I would have taken them both in without hesitation. It was _wrong_ ; wrong on a level I hadn't known until now. This was the first time I'd seen Monica give in fully to the villainous training and indoctrination she'd lived with for all those years. This was a whole magnitude worse than the first time we'd ever met. There she'd done what Cutter had asked her to do.

Here she'd happily initiated torture. This was why she was "one of the scary ones." This was why people broke down when she brought them to her workroom. I had to imagine she'd done things like that over and over and over again, to each and every person we'd spoken to, and had probably appeared to enjoy-. No. _Had_ enjoyed it. I was sharing a room with a supervillain, in the bowels of Royal Pain's Supervillain Academy, and right now that had suddenly hit me on a deep gut level.

"Holy fuck," I said, the instant the door was closed.

"She had it coming after everything she's done, psychotic bitch," Monica said, her expression one of self-righteous satisfaction.

Monica's eyes were very bright, and her cheeks were flushed with emotion. From everything I knew that Cutter had done, especially the things I had _seen_ her do, for "killing" Penny, for nearly butchering Layla, she deserved some kind of punishment. But it freaked me out to have seen the hate and fear on her face and the triumph on Monica's. The way we had threatened Cutter, so directly and blatantly, made me queasy.

 _I'm sharing a room with a supervillain. I was in a bed with her. I just saw her_ torture _someone. I_ helped _her torture someone. I helped her… willingly._

Anger swelled from deep within me, tangled with a hundred fears I'd had since coming to this place, and crowned with my father's face. I'd just crossed a line I promised myself I'd never cross. I'd gone from aiding the enemy in order to deceive them to actually becoming one of them.

I kept myself from bursting into flames, but my hands were hot enough to scorch when I grabbed Monica's shoulders and slammed her back against the wall. Blood from her slashed scalp began to trickle down one side of her face. I ignored it.

"I don't care if she deserved it!" I yelled. "Damn it, we shouldn't have done that-."

"Warren, what the hell?" she demanded, struggling. I growled at her, vision going red, and she stopped moving, surprise on her face when she saw my expression. I couldn't intimidate her with pain, but she knew I could damage her badly if I wanted to.

 _One of them…_ my brain whispered.

 _Shut up!_ I demanded.

"Take your hands off of me. I was just protecting you," Monica hissed, her dark eyes hot with anger.

"I don't need you to protect me-."

"Yes you do. In here-."

"I don't fucking care!" I roared. "I don't need you to protect me from supervillains. I've been doing that most of my fucking life!"

"Cutter has played those games with lots of people, and no one has ever stood up to her before. There's no way I was going to let you out of my sight in here, particularly not with her," she explained, her teeth bared, a dangerous expression.

"You think I can't fend her off? That I'm so goddamn _weak_ just because this is your home turf?"

"What, and you didn't think the same of me on yours? You were so eager to protect me from all of your friends and fellow heroes. Ashamed of me? Thought I couldn't handle their reactions? Thought I'd collapse?" she snapped.

"You _did,_ " I pointed out, my face inches from hers.

Monica's hand flashed in the corner of my eye, finger blades flashing close to my face, stopping inches from contact. I could have burned her before she did anything, but I knew I would regret it. Both of us froze in a Mexican standoff.

"I want to hurt you so badly right now," she breathed. Her hand crackled with black pain energy and my own were nearly red hot, and dangerously close to her neck.

"Why don't you?" I snarled.

"I'm not mad at you," Monica said. "You have a damn fucking irritating habit of being right and sometimes you shove it down my throat, but I don't hate you for it. I'm goddamn tired and angry, but I have reasons for doing what I did."

I waited for more of an answer, feeling suddenly like we were on the brink of something.

"I am not weak anymore Warren. _I did not do that to Cutter because I wanted to_ ," she said. "I finally understand why I'm doing this, why I came here, why I have to do it this way."

"Tell me," I said softly. Neither of us dropped our hands so much as an inch.

"This place is evil. It only 'helps' the ten percept of people tough enough and callous enough to embrace cruelty; the ones who are willing to walk over the backs of a dozen people to take what they want. Everyone else is scared to death of themselves and everyone around them. No one should have to live fearing and hating themselves or anyone else every single day. And I'll be damned again before I let those evil bastards here hurt anyone else."

"If you died tonight, I'd stay and tear this place down with my own hands if I had to. I'd find some way to get those others out of here and I'd find some way to blow this place myself. It doesn't matter what would happen to me, as long as I stop this place. Do you understand me?" she asked, both conviction and desperation in her voice.

"I understand," I said slowly. At least, I think I did.

"I will _never_ be the kind of hero you are," she hissed, standing up straight, looking up into my eyes, challenge written in every line of her. "I will never be able to intimidate someone without hurting them eventually. But I know the difference between how to get someone's attention and just bringing them to their knees for fun. Cutter does not respond to anything subtle. I did that to her because when we finally fight, I want her to be so concentrated on killing me that she forgets about you, forgets about running, forgets about hurting anyone else but me."

Monica closed her eyes for a second and some of the tenseness left her body.

"What makes a hero, Warren? Intent? Your father had good intentions; he wanted to save the world from itself. But he murdered to try to do it, and that was wrong. Methods? Death doesn't make a hero, and torture doesn't either. You showed me I can do other things with my powers, things I'd forgotten… ways I can use them safely. And I want to do this. It's _want_ that makes a hero. Desire, desire to do something right with your life.

"Warren, I _want_ this place destroyed with as little harm as possible to anyone else. I don't want something like this to happen to anyone else ever again," she said, looking back up at me. Her eyes looked huge in the shadowed light, and she was looking at me with an odd mixture of entreaty and stubbornness.

"I need you to believe in me," she said finally.

Something snapped in my mind, like a dislocated joint snapping into place, and the furious uncertainty I had been living with for nearly a week seemed to vanish. Clarity of thought returned and my nausea and anger vanished.

"I believe you," I said, pressing my lips to her blood-soaked hair. The ember-fire tricked into my hands, turning from orange to red, wanting to brush away the faint inner shadow of her slashed scalp. She let me in, and I could see her life-fire was still untainted by the black bands that had nearly been controlling her before.

 _She knows what she's doing,_ I realized, letting the red fire brush away the faint shadow, then dropping out of my trance with the characteristic jolt of pain as Monica pulled me back out.

"I believe in you," I repeated. Monica smiled a little and laced her fingers around my neck, pressing her face into my chest. We stayed that way for a long time, just holding each other, before the emotional strain of the day caught up to us in fatigue. This time we collapsed onto Monica's bed, cradled together, but nothing more. We just shared the warmth between us, our hands intertwined, as we drifted off into sleep.

* * *

"What was that little stunt?" the Dreamer demanded.

 _This is getting old, fast,_ I thought.

"If you can read my damn mind enough to know what happened, then you already know the fucking answer to that," I said. No, it wasn't particularly polite to mouth off to my aunt. But then again this whole conversation was so completely inane that I didn't care. There were some bigger issues at hand. Very close at hand.

"You're touchy tonight," she muttered behind her veil.

"Look, you know it wasn't a stunt. She had a reason, a good one for doing that. And-. Screw it, I don't really care about explaining this right now. If you can pass on messages, pass on this one: Attack now," I said.

 _My, aren't you pushy today?_ my brain commented brightly. _Get bent,_ I thought back, and looked at the Dreamer.

"It's a good thing you didn't tell me to hold off the attack, because they're just about ready now. I'll tell them, and we should be there at dawn," she said, nodding her head a fraction.

"That seemed too easy," I muttered. The Dreamer had given me little concrete help over this past week, and a little helpful dream-nudge might have kept me from nearly going nova six times a day.

"Easy? Phoenix, we've been doing everything possible within our power to keep the heroes from attacking for the last three days. Your mother is nearly frantic with worry, Emberkeeper had to be restrained from burning down the Council chamber, and if Guardian hadn't suddenly thrown in on the Peacemaker's side, The Commander would have lead the charge in to kill you before any more supervillains came out healed," she snapped.

I actually laughed, which made the Dreamer nearly steam at the ears.

"Zack found the maps," I said with a bit of a smile. There was no way that Will would have gone from wanting to get me out immediately to going along with my mom's idea that we should wait unless Zack had found Monica's maps. She'd left Zack a copy of maps of the academy along with an outline of our plan, knowing that with Zack's messy room he wouldn't find them until now. Will and the others now knew Monica's plan, and they knew that I wasn't being mind-controlled. My friends were back on my side. I felt a relief so intense it was nearly painful.

"Do I want to know?" the Dreamer asked wearily. I shook my head; it was too complicated to explain right now. "Then fine."

She looked off to one side and sighed.

"Wake up Warren, someone's at the door."

* * *

Pounding on the door woke me, along with Monica shaking my shoulder.

I groggily came awake, and then suddenly the mental cobwebs cleared as I remembered the conversation with the Dreamer. But from how tired I was feeling, it couldn't be dawn yet. A quick check of the clock revealed it to be three in the morning. So who the hell was at the door?

"Someone has a death wish," Monica growled as I sat up. Shoving off the bed, she stalked over to answer the knocking, adopting a fearsome expression. For a half-second I feared it might be Cutter… But then I realized Cutter would never bother knocking before attacking.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Monica demanded of whomever was on the other side of the door. She cracked it open as she spoke, and I saw her expression go blank. I got to my feet and lurked behind her.

"Painbreaker, we need Phoenix," Meduka said, his odd voice even more strange and echo-like in the stone corridor outside. The heavily-muscled trainer looked tired and ragged, like someone had just dragged him out of _his_ bed too. "Cutter just came in and they can't stop the bleeding."

 _Crap,_ I thought.

Monica snapped her fingers imperiously at me and I stuck to her side as we ran through the corridors, my stomach in a knot.

"What happened?" I asked. Meduka looked at me oddly, academy protocol overriding any respect he had for me personally. And protocol demanded that everything got filtered through Painbreaker. Particularly at three a.m.

"Answer the man," Monica said mildly, and Meduka flinched, fatigue dulling his courage.

"Jewelry robbery went wrong. Cutter and Silver smashed the cases right before the Mind Gamers showed up. Psi-Lance used her powers to hang the shards in the air so Cutter couldn't teleport out, and then called for them to surrender. Cutter used her powers anyway. I have no idea how she got back here still alive…"

Corridors flew past during Meduka's explanation and faint cries could be heard ahead as we got to the infirmary door. Inside, Cutter was in the first room, her skin pale as the white sheets and her silver costume liberally splashed with crimson. A large shard of glass was impaled in her abdomen and blood was running down her side.

Someone had managed to get a blood transfusion going, but whoever had done it was long gone by now. The reason why was clear. Son of Silver was hovering over Cutter, alternately holding her hand and raging impotently against what had happened to her. Except I couldn't hear a word he was saying. I knew he was "raging" because of the expression on his face and the gestures he was using, but though his lips were moving, nothing audible was coming out.

Cutter was alternately hissing in pain and trying to calm Silver down. She was talking, albeit with a lot of effort, but also moving her hands at the same time. I remembered she had done the same kind of thing in Maxville the last time the two of them had shown up. But this time she didn't have her knives in her hands to confuse the issue. She was using sign language. Son of Silver was deaf, and apparently mute too.

Somehow, somewhere, that was going to be useful, but not now.

"Phoenix," Cutter said weakly, and pointed at me. Silver whipped around, took two steps over to grab me and dragged me to Cutter's side, nearly shoving me through the bed rail.

"Fix her," he mouthed, his expression dark and panicked. The wrongness about Cutter was hammering me hard, making it difficult to think through both the clamor of adrenaline and the lack of sleep. I hadn't seen someone this badly hurt since my last bad car accident on my cover job, barring Cutter's own attack on Layla.

Monica wouldn't meet my eyes when I looked around. This had been a scenario I had been dreading. Nothing but major surgery or me was going to save Cutter now. And surgery wouldn't save her in time. Silver grabbed the sleeve of my jacket when I hesitated, a look of doom and despair in his eyes. I met him stare for stare, not wanting to back down, and then carefully gripped the glass shard. I looked down at Cutter, and saw the pure panic brought on by the certain knowledge that she was about to die.

It was an expression I'd seen more than once on a car wreck victim.

 _Damn it_ , I thought.

I took a deep breath and yanked the shard out. Cutter screamed and thrashed in agony. In a blink of an eye, Son of Silver had drawn a gun had it pressed against my forehead. Monica moved a half step forward before Silver brought his other gun up to point at her.

"Fix Cutter," he mouthed again. "Or I'll shoot you both."

Despite the gun that was very much pressing into my forehead, I could see he was truly desperate; that he actually was afraid of losing Cutter. But he was also used to getting what he wanted, and I doubted he'd ever asked for anything politely.

Cutter's long trail of injury, maiming, and death, not to mention her trying to kill me twice didn't earn her any clemency in my book. I didn't have a lot of choice though. The ember fire was pressing hard against my control, knowing that Cutter was dying right next to me.

I hated her. But I wouldn't let her die.

The ember-flames flared on my hands, for the first time mixed with orange as my anger tinged my compulsion to fix Cutter's dying body. Silver holstered his guns as he saw the reddish fire, his attention now fixed on his girlfriend rather than me.

"This is gonna hurt," I told Cutter flatly, and put my hands on her stomach. The fire flared brightly enough to make everyone wince, and I could suddenly see Cutter's life-fire, a jagged black bolt through it, slowly darkening everything around it, the fire fading inexorably.

I could feel Cutter arcing and hear her screaming as the fire ate up her injuries inside, stopping the bleeding, sealing off the damage, and connecting what had been severed. When it came time to close the outer gash itself, I couldn't bring myself to just help her body close it naturally. She wasn't dying anymore. The ember-fire wanted to help her, but I didn't have to make it pleasant. I didn't want to. I wouldn't see her die, but I wouldn't make it easy for her either.

So I just cauterized the damn thing shut.

No, it wasn't heroic. Yeah, I felt a little bad about doing it. But after every single person I had sent out-battle ready during this week, I wanted her to be delayed for a day or two. Long enough that she wouldn't be able to fight us easily during the final battle. I just hoped that justification didn't mean I was slipping.

Silver damn near drew his gun again when Cutter screamed at the last flare of flame, but as the wound closed and the bleeding stopped before his eyes, he held his peace… and his piece. When all that was left was a welt-like scar from the cauterized wound, Monica dug her finger blades into my shoulder and jerked me back.

Cutter was shuddering; a sheen of sweat covering her skin, but her color was a hell of a lot better than it had been. Through some miracle, the transfusion needle had managed to say in her arm through all of her gyrations, and fresh blood was flowing in to replace what she'd lost. I idly wondered who had donated that blood, and if they had any idea that it would be used by a supervillain.

Silver calmed down the second Cutter opened her eyes, and touched her face gently, as if afraid of causing her any more pain. I could see only the faintest of scars from Monica's rough treatment earlier today; I'd inadvertently healed them along with everything else.

Cutter was breathing almost gingerly, as if not yet sure she still could. Locking eyes with Silver, she put her arms along him for a very long kiss. I just stood there, feeling both angry and somewhat superfluous, but Monica shook her head slightly when I would have tried to slip out the door.

"I warned you," Monica said softly to Cutter, and I saw her stiffen slightly and break off the kiss.

"That fucking hurt!" Cutter said darkly, her hands gesturing in translation for Silver.

"You're alive, aren't you?" Monica asked reasonably. "It's pyrokinetic healing; it's not exactly easy on the body. Cutter glared at her, but couldn't sustain it long. Injured as she had been, and with as rough as I'd been on her, she wasn't going to be getting around easily for a few days. I hoped that would be enough.

As Cutter and Monica glared at each other, an insanely loud alarm suddenly reverberated through the air and lights on the walls began flashing. I clapped my hands over my ears in pain as Monica's eyes widened.

"They're here!" she shouted, and my heart skipped a few beats in both fear and relief. It was the proximity alarms. The superheroes were coming. And the academy was going down.


	47. M is for Massacre

"Execute action M, battle positions! Execute action M, battle positions!" a harsh voice shouted over the alarms.

Monica and I turned as one, running from the infirmary and toward her rooms. We needed our costumes and hopefully had to attend to two last minute details. Around us the hallways were thick with people, but everyone was so focused on getting where they needed to be that no one had the time or inclination to do anything more than yell. By the time we fought our way clear to our corridor, nearly everyone was already gone.

"Action M?" I asked, as we rounded the last corner.

"M is for massacre," Monica said flatly as we simultaneously skidded to a halt in front of our door. Through some miracle, the two people we needed to see were lurking nearby. One was Dallas, and the other was Allie, the reluctant spokesperson for "our" technopaths.

"What do you need?" Dallas demanded. Poor Allie just clutched her laptop and looked like she wanted to vanish. My mind had started running at hyperspeed, regardless of the stress and interrupted sleep, and I didn't need any time to organize my thoughts.

"Stash him somewhere safe and then get out of here. Relay whatever you can as fast as you can; they're going to need everything you can tell them," I said rapidly. Dallas didn't waste any more time than me.

"Workroom, that should be safe enough," he said, and took off running. Elise and Tracy would park Dallas' body in Monica's "workroom," and finally be able to get back to their own bodies and relay the information they'd been sent here to get. With any luck they'd be able to give the heroes some kind of edge… I hoped. They didn't have much time.

Monica turned to Allie, talking right over me.

"Get the others, bring your gear and some cover and get near the front. We're going to be up there, and we need you close if we're going to be able to protect you," she said.

Allie gulped, nodded, and vanished down the corridor. Less than a minute later, fully costumed and ready, Painbreaker and I left the academy.

* * *

The daylight was the first I'd seen in a week, and it seemed intolerably bright even through the lenses of my helmet. Pure morning light was spilling down over the mountain peaks, revealing the ranks of heroes set against the academy. The place was eerily silent, everyone waiting for people to get into position before a single word was exchanged. The sky was dotted with fliers, and the field glowed with the color of everyone's costumes.

And right in the front rank of the heroes were the unified ranks of the Battle clan. Next to them was the Peacemaker, and I felt my heart clench when I saw her. Right behind her were the Champions of Justice, then classmates from Sky High, my old teachers, other heroes from around Maxville, people I had met in the Bureau… hundreds of them, arranged, at least to my eyes, in order of how well they knew me, and what claim they had to me. The ones with the best chance of killing me, if it came to that.

Monica and I were expected to spearhead the academy side, with Cutter's Crew behind us. The other villains spread out on either side, ranged up the side of the mountains seemingly at random. They looked rather haphazard, but I knew it was because they'd left spaces in their ranks for the mega rays and deadly beam weapons to wreak havoc on the heroes. The villains were, I fervently hoped, going to be bitterly disappointed.

Cutter, pale and angry, glared at me as we passed, but it lacked heat. Son of Silver was unobtrusively propping her up, and Skybolt, Viper, and the already-shifted Bloodtalon and Bruin posed nearby.

"Remember what side you're fighting on, both of you," she said, eyes flashing death threats at us. "Rile them up, get them pissed off and coming straight at us."

Monica nodded shortly and turned to leave, but Cutter wasn't done yet.

"Bruin, you stay with them. If they try anything, kill them," she added sharply. The grizzly bear snorted in agreement and lumbered toward the front with us. Cutter had one last word for him though. She leaned down and spoke quietly in his ear. I couldn't hear what she said, but if a bear could go pale, that's what Bruin did just then. Without another word, Bruin followed after us, practically nipping at our heels.

I had to keep from looking at the figure in white at the center of the superheroes' line, and forced my attention back to Bruin to distract myself.

"Remember what _I_ said?" I asked quietly. Bruin snorted at me, and I suddenly hoped I hadn't made a fundamental mistake with him.

"Phoenix, you're expected to strike the first blow, and to strike where it will hurt the most. If you don't, things will go very badly for you," Painbreaker's distorted voice was conversational, but the words were more for the benefit of Cutter, or anyone else who was trying to eavesdrop.

"I've heard of a knife at my throat, but a bear?" I asked in return.

Bruin made another snorting sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. I felt a little of my stress ease.

"We're here, ten feet in front of you. Don't step on us," Allie's voice crackled over my com. Bruin paused briefly at the faint noise, but kept walking ever-so-casually around the apparently bare spot where the technopaths were seated. He ignored them, though he had to have smelled them. There were faint, almost imperceptible squeaks of anxiety and fear coming from my com, but no one broke cover… whatever cover they were under.

"Holographic camouflage blanket," Monica whispered, in both explanation for me and understanding for them. "Nice work. You all ready?"

"Yes," "Yeah," "Affirmative," came in a ragged chorus through the com channel.

"Once we jack into the system, we can't move," Allie warned me.

"We'll keep you safe," I promised. "We'll do everything we can."

"Thank you," someone else whispered.

They had to be terrified, but they were drawing courage from the fact that today, _they_ were going to be the most important people on the battlefield, just by using their laptops and powers. The technopaths didn't need a wireless hotspot to connect with the network, or a cable, or a hub, or anything like that. They didn't have to type in half their commands, they could _think_ them, and they could network together by their powers alone. And if there were any glitches or problems, they'd know it _immediately_ without having to bother with diagnostic programs.

Though the system was supposed to be set up so they couldn't modify it without being at specific terminals… well, just try to tell a bunch of former hackers that there was an "unbreakable" system. It had been like waving a red flag at a bull, and all of them had found backdoors into the academy computers. They were more than ready to do their part.

The morning was silent, deathly quiet, as both sides went still in anticipation of the coming battle. You could have heard a pin drop as Mom stepped forward, her white dress glowing in the morning light.

"Phoenix, you have to come back now," she said softly, though I'm sure everyone could hear her.

"I can't. I won't," I called back more loudly, mentally adding "… _Until this is done."_ Could she tell what I was going to do? What would she say? No amount of mental visits was any kind of substitute for a face-to-face confrontation, and I knew she had to doubt everything she knew right now.

Painbreaker stood right at my elbow as I talked, one hand on my arm possessively. There were a few growls from the ranks of the heroes when they saw that, and I could feel Monica trembling.

"Peacemaker, we've agreed, if he won't return voluntarily, then it's our responsibility to stop him in any way necessary. Tell me _now,_ " Emberkeeper said in a voice of doom. Tobias was taking my apparent defection _very_ personally. If he got his hands on me before I'd had a chance to show my true colors, I was going to regret it.

Mom regarded me across the field, her face very still. I needed the academy to believe I was on their side until the last possible moment. Cutter had wanted me to get the heroes to charge their ranks, and not-so-coincidentally that's what I needed too. To cause the maximum amount of chaos amongst the academy that would give the heroes the best chance to win, I couldn't let Mom tell them that I was still on the side of right.

She'd kept my secrets so far, but in the face of my own death at the hands of my friends and fellow heroes, could she keep silent?

My head was crystal clear for the first time in a long time. Mom couldn't read thoughts, but I was straining to tell her without words that I needed more time.

_Just give me one more minute… I need one last trick. Help me pull the wool over their eyes. I can save them. We can do this together, I know it._

There was another moment of deadly silence, and then Mom did something I'd never heard her do before.

She lied.

"Not you too," she said in a carrying voice tinged with despair, a voice that could be heard easily in every corner of the battlefield. "Not my son too."

There was a sudden spattering of hyena-like laughter from the academy villains when they saw the heroes' faces drop into expressions of betrayal and fury. But they weren't quite angry enough, not yet. And I had to find some way to get them really mad… I'd been playing with fire for over half my life, but this was the first time I thought I might get burned.

"Phoenix!" Will shouted, flying up over the lines and calling down to me from a lofty height. "You told me you never wanted to be like your dad. You don't have to do this, please! "

The pain in his voice sounded raw and agonizing, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Will had never been so good an actor that he could pull something like that off unless he thought I'd really turned… Could he? Was everything about to go wrong?

I couldn't stop now though.

"Yes I do," I snarled, and let fire engulf my arms.

"Please, you really didn't think you could win, did you?" Cutter laughed at the heroes. "He'd helped more of us in a week than he has for you in three years. And he's enjoyed it. You came here for nothing, you overbearing do-gooder fools. And now you're going to _DIE!"_

Cutter's scream, from the tense faces of the academy students, was supposed to signal all of the defenses and traps to deploy. Over the quiet of the battlefield there was a great grinding of gears, some ominous clunks, and black smoke began to pour from various places in the ground. With great unplanned timing, someone in the heroes' ranks snickered.

Cutter went white, then red, and I chose to push it just the last little bit. _Stay perfectly still_ , I prayed, and let my fire fly right at Mom's feet. There was a simultaneous roar of triumph and outrage from the two sides, and everyone suddenly surged forward, gaining behind us and towards us. Time slowed for me as everything we'd been working for boiled down to a few crucial seconds.

Guardian was swooping down out of the sky at punishing speeds, with three other academy fliers on an intercept course. I let a few fireballs fly his way for good measure, and had the dubious satisfaction of hearing the shouts from the heroes get even louder. In the chaos no one would realize they hadn't connected for a few seconds.

The Battle family had run past the Peacemaker even as Guardian flew closer and closer, and the supervillains were just behind me. Mom's face was absolutely expressionless as the crowd swept past her, but Tobias was both furious and, I realized with a pang, nearly crying. Faster heroes began to pour around him, reacting to the tidal wave of villains at my back. Monica tightened her hands on my shoulders as the noise and tension built to a breaking point, and then finally let go.

Deliberately I turned my back on the heroes, to gasps of outrage, and opened fire on the supervillains that were nearly on top of us. Painbreaker's power screamed alongside my fire, and what looked like black-edged flame washed over the Crew, stopping them dead in their tracks with searing, burning pain. That was the only way we'd figured to keep ourselves in one piece until we had the chaos of battle as our shield. And Son of Silver, mostly immune to my flame, wouldn't leave Cutter's side while she was in pain. It was a damn dirty trick, but we had to keep ourselves alive.

" _Run!"_ we screamed, as other villains began to stream around the Crew.

All through the ranks of the villains, people began to peel off from the main group, causing holes in the ranks, leaving people open and gaping in shock, slowing their charge, and causing as much confusion as possible. Nightsteed bucked Cowboy Jack off his back, Voidhammer, the gravity manipulator, arced up into the sky, Waterborn splashed right into the ground…

_It's working, thank God, it's actually working!_

I was fully expecting them to disappear over the mountains, which would have been plenty of confusion right there, and all I dared hope for. Instead a good half of the rescued former villains suddenly turned back, and began tearing into the villains' ranks! The heroes barely hesitated when that happened, and the two lines met with a deafening crash. I lost sight of Battle clan and the Champions of Justice almost immediately as the battle swirled around us, coming between the Crew and us. The heroes in the front ranks had pulled their attacks on Painbreaker and me, and I nearly felt faint with relief as they dodged around us to go after the villains bearing down on them.

Then the villains were on top of us, and I didn't have any more time to think.

Next to us, Bruin let out an ear-shattering roar and swiped at the first villain to try to breach our circle. I'd been concentrating so hard on the battlefield as a whole that I hadn't even realized he had stayed. I definitely noticed him now as someone in electric blue went flying backwards into two others, blood flying from claw slashes.

_Christ, he's going to slaughter somebody…_

"Bruin!" I yelled, "Try not to fucking kill anyone!"

I only got a frantic snort in reply as others pressed in, determined to see us dead. And just as determinedly, other heroes weren't going to just let them go past without some trouble.

It was all Monica, Bruin, and I could do to just keep the fighting from overwhelming our little patch of ground that sheltered the technopaths. They'd already done a fantastic job of taking out the weapons, but the other technopaths and the Headmaster would be frantically trying to bring them back on-line. This was where the technopaths' powers, even as subtle as they were, were beyond price, even more so than the titanic powers surging all around them.

The noise and chaos around us were incredible, and while we _had_ been on the front line, now we were more in the middle, as groups of heroes and villains were being driven back and forth all over the battlefield. The supervillains had begun to realize that not only had they been betrayed by their own, but that they weren't going to win this one. The heroes were no longer isolated by clever academy planning, and without the academy's home court advantage of their weapons, for once the villains were having to fight straight-up, with no possibility of being able to run back "home."

I saw some people try though, dashing for the hidden academy doors, only to find them locked, from the inside, and too strongly for nine-tenths of the academy to force open. Coldly, the Headmaster was forcing them to fight, pawns in his own personal plot of revenge. Royal Pain's revenge. I had a sudden inkling of an idea, but couldn't stop to ponder it now. Villains that found the doors locked were now fighting with the tenacity of cornered rats: vicious, brutal, and chaotic.

The heroes were not going to be gentle with the academy either; there were too many people with personal grudges, and just as many with scores to settle on the behalf of others. And the supervillains had little to lose now. They had two choices now, kick free of the battle and run for their lives, hoping no one would follow, or try to take as many people down with them when they fell. With most of the academy villains primed for hyper-violence, we just had to make sure that didn't happen.

 _Oh yes,_ just _have to make sure to keep the whole academy from going Grade-A psycho. That ought to be a cinch!_ my brain snarked.

The battle raged all around us; I saw the unending volley of flame from Fire Court hammering tougher villains ahead of us, swirls of colds from Winter Court icing down those with speed or fire powers, and Tesla was spearing whatever hostile flyers she could with electricity. Two villains in high-tech suits were dodging her attacks with skill and returning fire with bullets and bombs. Sonic Boom's voice was thundering from somewhere, and I saw Comet arcing above everyone before striking to earth somewhere in the back.

I saw The Commander taking on five super-strong villains at once, while Jetstream was harrying another flyer glowing with red energy. Guardian was everywhere, hammering flyers, aiding belabored superheroes, and rescuing others. The academy was taking its toll, though. Waves of energy, poisonous green and purple, rippled across the battlefield, sending people to their knees. Explosions sent people flying, hero and villain alike, and smaller rays and beams were criss-crossing the battlefield with little regard for anyone in their path. Screams and cries of pain were as thick as taunts and quips, and spikes of wrongness kept distracting me.

The battle was chaotic enough that I didn't see a hurling ball of fangs and claws leaping toward me until it was nearly on top of me. I recognized a villainous shapeshifter called Talon about a half second before he was going to rip my head off. I ducked futilely as a scream of defiance sounded behind me. Something huge and black leapt over my head and slammed into Talon, forcing him back with a half-ton of muscle and sharp hooves.

Nightsteed reared, lashing out again as Talon ducked, and I saw Monica's power arc over the stallion to hit the shapeshifter. I didn't have time to be surprised at Nightsteed's rescue as Talon screamed, and I could see him gathering himself for another leap. Time slowed again as I hurled fire at him, only to see him plucked from the ground by an invisible force and go flying over the battlefield.

"Bad cat!" I heard someone yell above me. I twisted upward to see Voidhammer hovering above our heads, her hands pointing at Talon.

"Nice save- Behind you!" I shouted, seeing Flamewing come diving out of the sky nearly on top of her. Voidhammer hurled herself toward the ground as he missed her by inches… deliberately shielding her from Hail's ice lances. Flamewing turned and slashed his fiery wings at Hail, forcing her to ground- where Meduka ( _Meduka?!_ ) was waiting to punch her out. Hail was lost in the chaos as Meduka closed in our little circle, while Flamewing and Voidhammer were hovering above.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded. I hadn't even talked to him _or_ Flamewing about going against the academy…

"I like to be on the winning side!" he yelled over the din, and ducked a flying rock.

 _He and Flamewing defected… they didn't turn, they motherfucking_ defected! _Holy-,_ I thought.

"You know what you've gotten yourself into?" I asked. Meduka only shook his head.

"Not really, but we really don't want to die."

 _Fuck…_ There wasn't enough time to do this right, not enough time to ask them the questions I needed to. But Meduka seemed sincere, even amidst all the chaos, and we _needed_ help defending the technopaths.

"Look, try not to kill or maim anyone unless you have to. Defend them," I said quickly, nodding to the concealed technopaths, before turning to hurl more fire at an incoming attacker. Cursing, the villain broke off his attack as I heard a distinct hissing from Meduka. Looking back, I saw he had taken the bands off of his "hair," and his head was now wreathed with over a dozen deadly-looking snakes.

"Defend who?" he was asking.

"No one touches that part of the ground. It's the technopaths, they're keeping the weapons' systems down," I said quickly. Meduka nodded once.

"Nobody get within arm's reach of me," he warned, and turned to cover another part of the circle.

For long minutes there was nothing but noise, violence, and blood as five former supervillains and I tried to fight off the press of academy villains. I had desperately hoped, when I had played this scenario over in my head, that we'd end up behind the heroes' lines or at least with the Champions. But instead we were in the thick of academy villains and grudge-minded heroes, and we couldn't spare even a second to get somewhere less dangerous.

"There's a ball of vines coming this way!" Flamewing called, and relief washed over me even as I heard a roar and crunch from Bruin's section of the circle.

"Let it through!" I yelled back. No one at the academy had plant powers, so it had to be Rose Queen. Had to be…

A massive sphere of greenery nearly rolled over Meduka, unspooling to reveal Rose Queen, Brilliance, Violet Cavey, and Viscosity. All three of the latter had various rays out and were pointing them threateningly at Painbreaker, Bruin, and Meduka.

"No! Hang on, they're on our side," I said quickly.

"Phoenix, what's going on?" Rose Queen demanded.

"They defected, they're helping- Don't step there!" I said, stopping Layla before she could step on the technopaths.

Rose Queen gave a quiet "eep" when one of the technopaths lifted up their cover blanket just enough to let her know who was under there.

"They're keeping the weapon systems down," I finished. Something exploded above our heads, and Voidhammer screamed. We looked up just in time to see something large and dark go hurling sideways at a high rate of speed.

"Sorry!" Voidhammer called.

"Eyes up, we still have incoming!" Painbreaker barked at the others. "Nightsteed, eleven o'clock!"

The black stallion reared and lashed out at someone, and I could see the Champions staring at me, incredulous looks on their faces.

"Warren, what the _hell_ have you been doing?" Violet Cavey said, so surprised she forgot to use my codename.

"Long story-."

"We're losing it! He's trying multiple individual overrides at once," Allie said sharply, and all the other technopaths started yelling right on top of each other.

"That's supposed to be impossible! Compensating-."

"We're not fast enough, I have activation-."

"Duck, duck!" someone shrieked.

Everyone in my immediate vicinity flattened themselves to the ground as a painfully bright light flashed above our heads.

"Shit, shit, that was heat ray!" one of the technopaths said, his voice on the edge of panic. Screams erupted from the far side of the battlefield, and I felt my stomach plunge in sick fear.

"The Headmaster is in the system, he has the override codes," I explained through nausea. "How long do we have?"

"We can shut them down as he brings them up, but he's going for the master override… Less than fifteen minutes. You have to get to him!" Allie said.

"Screw this, I didn't sign up to die!" another one of the technopaths said, his courage cracking under the strain, and started to surge to his feet under the camouflage blanket. Painbreaker reacted instantly, hauling back down to a sitting position and getting right in his face.

"Listen Eric, you have your choice between certain death on the battlefield, because you do _not_ have the strength to run through his holocaust on your own, or only _possible_ death right here. Hack the damn system, keep these weapons down, and you just might live through this. You'll finally get free. Do you understand me?" she demanded.

There was a single moment of deathly silence as Eric thought it over. And then he abruptly hauled the camouflage blanket back down over his head. I didn't have time to add any word of encouragement; every second we wasted was another the Headmaster could use to activate more of those weapons.

"Where the hell is the Headmaster?" I demanded.

"Central Control Room!" Allie shouted frantically, too focused to let fear affect her.

I'd passed that room literally hundreds of times this week; it was right on the way to Monica's workroom, and she'd pointed it out the first day. Not that I'd been able to do anything about it until now.

"He's got partial defenses up. We have the other half jammed; he's got more important things to think about now," Allie added.

" _Where_ is he?" Rose Queen asked. When I realized exactly where we had to go to get to the Headmaster, I started to smile. Nastily.

"The Headmaster," I explained quickly, eyes peeled for further trouble, "is in a heavily shielded control room in the middle of a maze of trapped corridors on the other side of the battlefield."

"He's in the middle of the Gauntlet," Viscosity breathed, getting it immediately.

"Hoo-rah!" Brilliance yelled in triumph, and then yelped when a stray blast of fire nearly toasted his shoes. I saw Flamewing strafe someone just off to my right, and heard a loud neigh from Nightsteed as he kicked someone else back from our protected circle. Black pain energy followed, and a scream faded as someone retreated rather than dare that again.

"Go!" Painbreaker thundered. "You're better at this than us. We'll hold here."

She'd be exposed to the weapons if we made any more mistakes… but I didn't have time to argue. She knew what the other ex-villains could do better than me, and they'd obey her out of torture-trained habit, at the very least. And she'd never forgive me if I tried to save her and lost everybody else to the academy. I trusted her to be the hero.

"Move!" I roared to the Champions, seeing the thick of the battle swing back toward us. We started threading our way through the battle, Voidhammer clearing us a corridor for as long as we were in her range.

"Guardian, Guardian," Rose Queen called into her com. "The Headmaster is in the Gauntlet, we have to get to him. Please help us thread the maze!"

"Threading the maze" Guardian-style involved a lot of broken walls, but it _would_ be the fastest way in.

"Busy!" Guardian panted, his voice crackling over the rest of our communicators. "Lots of- yeow! flyers, lightning, fire up here. Jetstream took out Bloodtalon, still a lot of traffic, lots of lasers up here, be with you later! Cutter is-." There was a loud _crunch_ over the com. "-all over the place, people hurt, lots of them. Son of Silver is on the field, and he's out for blood! I'll be there soon as I can!"

Will was up there, doing the job of a dozen heroes all at once, trying to prevent anyone else from going down. He could take abuse no other hero could, and be there faster than anyone to help people out of tight spots. He could see the battlefield more clearly than anyone but another flyer, and he probably had a much better idea of how things were going, as a whole, than I did. And he knew he couldn't leave, even to help us out, because he'd leave too many people in deadly danger. That was a hard choice, a hero's choice, and something all of us understood.

But I'd do everything I could to make things either for him.

"Send Boomer after Son of Silver," I said suddenly.

"What?" Guardian said incredulously. Sonic Boom wasn't exactly the guy you'd think of to take down a superhero assassin.

"He'll never hear him coming," I insisted. If Silver got hurt, then at least Cutter would finally quit the field to get him out of trouble. With Cutter gone, the Crew would lose its remaining cohesion, and with _them_ out of the way, the academy became less a team than a group of individuals. And _those_ were a hell of a lot easier to defeat.

"Done," Guardian said after a second. _He_ had a secondary com to all the other heroes, because he was a leader. I didn't, because I'd cannibalized my secondary channel to connect with Painbreaker and the technopaths.

"Incoming!" Violet Cavey yelled, and we all ducked and scattered as someone just missed us with green laser beams.

"Go!" I said as they passed, and we all started pelting hell-for-leather across the field. Rose Queen grew us a shield of heavy vines and bark to protect us from any more surprises. It kept pace with us through columns of grass she grew and shrank before and after our passing.

The greenery, even moving oddly as it was, gave us a little camouflage from air attacks, and seemed to sincerely weird out those on the ground. Going as fast as we were, and with Rose Queen keeping us covered from above, it was my job to ward off attacks from the side. Brilliance's light attacks would attract more attention than we could afford, and neither him, Violet, nor Viscosity was very good shooting on the run. I was the best shot of the group, even if I was starting to feel a faint hint of inner cold that even anger and adrenaline couldn't touch.

Screams and howls were blasting from both sides, and we had to veer as the all-too-familiar towering form of a metal t-rex began running towards us. We were out of Voidhammer's range by now, but I heard a loud crunch of tortured metal as someone stepped up to tangle with the robotic dinosaur. Saurian Lord must be having a field day with this. We had to go faster…

"V, Vi, shift and stow!" I called. Immediately Rose Queen grew a small pitcher plant for Viscosity to ride it, and Violet Cavey shifted, holding on to Brilliance's collar. Since Ethan and Magenta were the shortest and the slowest, we'd worked this trick out last year for times like this, when speed was key. And they'd actually done it. I'd been afraid that my friends might have told me to go to hell for what I'd done, but they were still talking to me, still listening to me…

The craggy terrain was in our favor, but even with camouflage _and_ speed, we weren't invisible. Over halfway to the door, there was the sharp, staccato thunder of gunfire behind us. And not of Son of Silver either, this was someone with a damn machine gun!

I risked a glance behind, spying someone in a jet-powered, weapons-laden mechanical suit. _Jet Scream_ , I realized, an academy flyer that had been setting himself up to be Jetstream's nemesis… apparently just for kicks. And we just happened to catch his eye.

"Rose, behind us!" I yelled. Rose Queen automatically strengthened the plant shield behind us, but I deliberately lagged, putting myself between the others and gunfire. Brilliance and I had the heaviest armor in the group, because we were the most likely to be hit, if it came to that.

Another hail of bullets erupted around us, and Rose Queen muffled a scream as sap and bark went flying along with shrapnel. I could feel a half-dozen hits on my armor, and two ripped right through the weaker plates near the shoulder, burning like hell. Brilliance muffled a yell when two more ricocheted off his back, and a third dug a shallow furrow across his upper arm. Nothing struck the others, and Scream had to circle around for another pass. He wouldn't miss again, and Rose Queen couldn't keep up the plant shield too much longer. I could tell she was already breathing hard; after all it had only been a week since Cutter's attack on her. Christ, it felt like months.

We hauled ass to the nearest entrance, steel doors embedded in reinforced concrete, a tough barrier even for Guardian. Rose Queen didn't even hesitate though; she let tree roots do the talking, and crumbled the rock around the entrance, ripping the doors open completely. Stronghold couldn't have done any better, and I resolved to _never_ piss off Layla early in the morning.

Rose Queen stumbled on the threshold, but Ethan resolidified almost immediately to help her. I couldn't see if she was pale under her mask, but her eyes were glassy. What she'd done right now had been the most I'd ever seen her do, and we could count ourselves lucky she hadn't flat-out fainted. Luckily it didn't matter now, the dim lightning and twisted corridors of the academy meant we had to go slower than we had outside.

I took the lead now, darkened hallways flashing by as we threaded our way towards a goal etched into my memory by both triumph and helpless rage.

"Jesus, how do you find your way around?" Brilliance asked as I unhesitatingly lead them down the second left of a five-way intersection.

"Memory and repetition, Glowstick. Just be glad it's not you leading us," I quipped, and Brilliance actually barked out a short laugh, remembering the L'arc de Triomph debacle a couple years back.

"Where is everyone else?" Violet asked, her squeaky voice echoing oddly in the stone hallways.

"Outside, trying not to die and willing take everyone else with them if they do," I said shortly. Despite my words, I was still afraid there might be people inside. Some of the teachers, or the Tenneys, or even the psychics might not have entirely abandoned the building. But would they honestly be looking for someone to make a semi-suicidal straight-on assault on the main control room? There weren't any cameras in the hallways; there wasn't any way to track our path, one way or the other. Either way, both our enemies and we would be equally surprised.

As we reached the darkest corridors near the weapons' rooms, an unexpected blast of heat hit me as we rounded the last turn. I skidded to stop as the last corridor came into sight. I'd wondered why we hadn't run into any of the Headmaster's defenses yet; the technopaths said he'd gotten them partially up. But now we had only a few minutes to get to him before he finished overriding the systems. Here, right on time, was our delay.

Instead of the corridor being a blank concrete box, the floor, walls, and ceiling were now red hot, and ranks of massive stone blocks were pistoning up and down, filling the hallways with a stone-grinding, red-hot death trap.

"Why can't supervillains ever just have a _door?_ " Violet yelled in frustration.

There was no time to find a way around the trap, even if there was one, and Guardian was still tied up.

"There's got to be a fail-safe," Viscosity said, staring at the red-hot blocks.

"I can go-," I started, but Rose Queen interrupted me sharply.

"Phoenix, you're tough, but if one of those things crushes your head, you're dead anyway."

"I can do it," Viscosity said softly.

"The heat-," Violet protested.

"Doesn't matter. Remember Yellowstone?" he asked.

"I've been trying to repress that for years," I muttered.

"Less quipping, more moving! We have maybe five minutes," Violet snapped.

"I can handle the heat if I go slow, and being squashed won't hurt me," Viscosity insisted.

"Dudes, no time!" Brilliance said.

"Guardian's not here, so we have to get creative. Viscosity, go!" I said. These were the kinds of scenarios we'd dreaded in school. Will's powers were our high card, and though we'd trained knowing sometimes we wouldn't be there, there were some times where he'd make things so much simpler…

Ethan melted and oozed up next to the hot floor for several agonizingly long moments. Then he calmly began to flow through the pounding blocks, blithely ignoring the crushing weight.

"Guys, what's going on? The weapons are starting to move!" Guardian's voice crackled over the coms.

"The corridor is trapped; we're trying something now. Guardian, where are you?" Rose Queen asked.

"Watching Boomer kicking Son of Silver all over the battlefield," he replied. I grinned at that; Boomer would be impossible to live with for months after this, but it was worth it to take out a killer like Silver. "And I'm keeping three flying death stars away from Phoenix's new buddies," Guardian added a little breathlessly.

"They aren't-," I began, but just at that moment the blocks retracted and the floor cooled down.

"Move!" I shouted to the others. "Guardian, get down here soon as you can. We have no idea how strong the Headmaster is."

"On my way-," he said. There were sounds of explosions coming over the com, and I had a sinking feeling that we might be on our own.

We all pelted down the corridor, the door of the Central Control Room in sight. Violet Cavey hopped down from Brilliance's shoulder, and tentatively put her nose to the door.

"Nothing," she whispered. No scent, no sound, no indication if there was anyone there.

"Mechanical suit," I whispered back, and she nodded. That would help kill any smell, and if he were doing technopathic stuff, there wouldn't necessarily be any noise.

"Brilliance, the door," Rose Queen said softly, hovering off to one side. I saw Viscosity press a spare ray into her hands, readying his own weapon as he stood slightly in front of her. Cut off from deep soil, and at the end of her strength and endurance, Rose Queen was going to have to fall back on basic training. Layla, who'd always been the worst at hand-to-hand combat, target practice, and nearly everything physical but using her powers, was down to an electrical stunner ray and Ethan's protection.

 _Stronghold is going to kill me if I let them get hurt again,_ I thought briefly.

I didn't hold my breath as Brilliance pressed himself to the keypad of the heavy metal door. It was probably shielded and surge-protected; this was Royal Pain's new Secret Sanctum, even if she'd rarely had the chance to use it. Surely the Headmaster would have protected it from simple stuff like that. We were going to have to break out the heat rays or something, waste more time trying to slag the door…

Then the lock popped open at the touch of Brilliance's excess static electricity.

Everyone blinked.

Once.

Twice.

And then charged the door.

Brilliance and I kicked it open, his light bombs crashing on the floor, filling the air with intense white light, hopefully giving us back an edge that our delays in the corridor had cost us. We'd automatically shielded ourselves from the blast, a nearly reflexive reaction to our oldest attack plan. Viscosity covered Rose Queen to the left, Violet stayed shifted and hidden on the floor behind Brilliance's boot, and the rest of us standing pointed rays (or in my case, fire) at our target.

"Impaired visual sensors, rerouting. Bypass, seventy-six percent complete," a calm synthesized voice announced overhead.

The last of the glare fading, I was momentarily distracted by my first sight of our enemy. Clad anonymously in a black-and-silver super-suit that bore a shocking resemblance to Royal Pain's, the Headmaster was half turned away from us, one hand in the bank of computers along the wall. Literally _in_ the computers, his hand flowed smoothly into the machinery as if were made of circuitry itself.

_What the hell?_

"Surrender now!" I bellowed. Three different rays, all of them more than enough to disable mechanical suits, were pointed right at him, not to mention my own fire. I might not be able to melt steel, but I could definitely scorch silicon. I hated to give this guy any kind of chance against us, but I owed it to myself, to the heroes, to give him one chance to give it up. I'd done enough things I'd regret this week; this would not be one of them. I was in front, so if the Headmaster wanted to attack, it'd be me first. I'd take the consequences for my own actions…

"Bypass, eighty percent complete," the computer voice chimed.

"Now!" I demanded.

The Headmaster turned his masked face toward us as if he'd just noticed us.

"No," he said calmly.

That was the second when everyone fired at once, all shooting to disable, all trying to disconnect him from the computers. That was also the exact second a force field flashed into existence between him and us, the rays splashing on it in psychedelic patterns, but doing no harm.

_No, God damn it, not now, no!_

"You're all going to fail, you realize. I won't be defeated by a pack of kids again," the Headmaster said, his calm voice slowly transmuting into a gravelly, electronic growl we were all pretty familiar with.

"Royal _Pain?!_ " Rose Queen exclaimed incredulously.

"In the circuits, Sidekick. You really don't think I would leave my academy, my perfect revenge, in the hands of my incompetent relatives and self-serving mercenary supervillains, do you?"

I kept myself from jumping as a quiet, squeaky voice sounded over my com. "Keep her talking, I'm going in. I did this before, and I sure as hell am going to do it again."

Violet Cavey, the person actually responsible for saving Sky High by disabling Royal Pain's anti-gravity sabotage device, was back on the case. Royal Pain was somewhat of a traditionalist when it came to sidekicks, if the academy was anything to go by, and she'd _always_ discounted the abilities, intelligence, and will of every sidekick she'd ever come across. She'd never even known that Magenta had been directly responsible for her grand plan's failure.

I risked a sideways glance down without moving my head; Violet was gone from behind Brilliance. She'd managed to get herself on the opposite side of the force field while we'd all been grandstanding.

Violet needed time; we had little to spare, and we had to use what we had wisely. Guardian was hopefully on his way, so we just had to stall until either Magenta or Will were ready. Brute force wouldn't get us out of here right now.

Well, Royal Pain had been a sucker for a monologue. _Here goes nothing…_

"How did you get out of Metroplex?" I demanded.

"Oh, I'm still there. But I left one of my finest creations watching over the academy: the most advanced AI supercomputer on the planet. All I needed was the occasional new input, which Saurian Lord was happy to provide for me. He even made me this lovely new body to use. Amazing things, nanobots. Nowhere they can't go, including the brain. They wouldn't let me draw diagrams and plans in prison, but they couldn't stop me thinking about them. And no psychic could read my thoughts once I put them into binary!"

"Wow, that's kind of cool, in a creepy sort of way," Viscosity muttered, sotto voce.

"Eyes on task," Violet squeaked back over the com.

I was also privately impressed, and extremely disturbed. I remember Monica telling me that keeping Skybolt, a specialized weather-controller, underground for so long had driven him insane. From what Royal Pain had just said, apparently the same thing had happened to a technopath cut off from technology for too long. She was stark raving bonkers.

What Saurian Lord had told me, about his foray into Metroplex being a big "fuck you" to Royal Pain on behalf of the Headmaster, was just one more lie. Most of the really dangerous villains were also the best liars, and it was clear that despite Saurian Lord's deceptively cheerful manner, he was just as dangerous as Royal Pain. And she'd been the one to plan this caper, which made her very dangerous indeed..

Instead of just lying there in his induced coma, Saurian Lord had sent out nanobots to Royal Pain, little machines that had scanned her mind for all the latest plans and upgrades, then returned to him for transport back to the academy. Maybe it hadn't even been the first time; constantly updated plans might explain why the academy had acted so erratically and brutally for the years leading up to this. Royal Pain had been clever, but not a psychopath before she'd gone to Metroplex. Somehow she'd figured out how to get her plans back to her special project, and the academy ended up marching to the beat of an insane, genius drummer.

"So who cares about your plans? You're still in prison, and this place is going down. You're already lost. Give it up!"

"You only think that this is over! You're so clever, pretending to be under control… and then you managed to subvert my technopaths, damn if I know how you managed that. But even with their interference, it's only a matter of time before I break their precious little counter-overrides."

"Bypass, ninety percent complete," the computer chimed.

_We do not have time for this shit. Come on Magenta!_

"You won't escape. Don't you know how many superheroes are up there?" Viscosity said sharply.

"Of course I know! And I don't care if you capture me or even kill me. Once this bypass is complete, the weapons will activate and kill everyone up there. I _want_ you to live with your failure, just like I am!" she snarled.

 _God…_ She wanted blood on our hands, not just of the superheroes, but also every single villain up there. She wanted us to fail, she wanted to hand us a Pyrrhic victory, a hollow win. The doomsday weapon of the academy was in its final countdown, and we were in the eye of the storm.

"What if we stop you before the bypass is complete?" Rose Queen asked, raising her ray a little higher.

"Got it. I'm getting the force field wire now!" Violet's squeaky voice piped over our coms.

"Guardian, where are you?" Brilliance demanded nearly silently, not moving his lips.

"Above you, I have you on GPS."

"Come down straight, four feet north of me. It's a robot," I said as quietly as I could.

"I'm tired of robots!" Guardian complained, his voice sounded ragged.

"How can you stop me when the force field is up and you're all the way over there?" Royal Pain asked us, her voice superior.

"Because you didn't seal us all out," Brilliance said, smiling.

Royal Pain froze in shock at the same time the computer chimed for the last time.

"Bypass one hundred percent complete, initiating weapons."

_"No!"_

The force field went down in a crackle of energy, and three rays and my own fire lashed out to destroy, not Royal Pain, but the computer. Screams erupted through the com as the ceiling caved in, Guardian coming down with both fists extended, crushing the Royal Pain AI into metallic powder. With a flash of sparks, all of the lights in the room went out at once.

Daylight poured in from the hole above, incongruously beautiful contrasted with the pain-filled screams echoing from above.

_Oh God, the weapons went off before we slagged the computer…_

"Get me up there," I said to Guardian. He was streaked with dirt, smoke, and blood, his eyes were red, his costume was torn, and there was a sluggishly bleeding wound in his side. He looked like he had just fought his way though hell, but I couldn't ask him to stop any more than I could.

"Phoenix…" he started softly, looking sad.

"Please! I'm not going to let her win, not after everything we've gone through to stop this," I pleaded.

"Rose Queen?" Guardian asked. With what seemed like terrible slowness, she crafted a vine harness for us, as Brilliance plucked Violet Cavey from the rubble. Eyes dull with fatigue, Guardian pulled us up through the hole he'd made. When we reached the top, the _wrongness_ hit me strong enough to stagger.

Though the horrible array of weapons had been active for only a second, they'd cut a huge swath of destruction across the battlefield. Splashes of color and darkness showed where heroes and villains alike had fallen. They were bleeding out even as I stared, and I finally understood, at a gut level, what Royal Pain had meant about making the cost too high. This was why the Bureau had never wanted to take the academy on its home ground. People were dying and it was all my fault. All my fault…

I had to save them; I couldn't let her win, not after everything that had happened. When Guardian set us down, I took only a half-dozen steps before he grabbed me and held me back. He'd seen the look on my face.

"Don't Phoenix, you'll burn yourself out!" he said.

"I have to, I got everyone into this, and I can't-."

"It will _kill you!"_ Will roared, shaking me to get me to see sense. "We just got you out of there."

"How can I be a hero if I don't-."

Will's eyes were full of tears, as were everyone else's. "We all knew coming into this that we might not survive. We had to stop the academy anyway."

"But-."

"I won't let you throw your life away, not when we just got you back!"

" _I have to!"_ I shouted, and tried to shove away from him. Tried, and failed. Not just because he was stronger, but also because I had no strength left. A week of little sleep and high emotional stress, healing Cutter earlier, plus the whole battle… Adrenaline and anger had sustained me so far, but with the Headmaster's "death," it was all catching up with a vengeance. The cold feeling in my gut was back with interest, a warning sign that I was dangerously overextended.

"I have to try," I said again, pleading.

"Perhaps we can help Phoenix."

Out of pall of smoke and steam left by the weapons came Fire Court, their scarlet and vermilion robes barely dirtied by the carnage around them.

"'Together we melt steel,'" I whispered in understanding, and Emberkeeper, Tobias, nodded gravely. What we'd done to the bank vault in Berlin, channeling all our power to Fire King, they could do to me for healing. Wild hope bloomed in my chest, and was abruptly crushed.

"I have to touch them to heal," I pointed out. The injured were scattered over a quarter of a mile or more, some half up steep hillsides. By the time I'd reach one or two, a dozen might die.

"We can bring them to you!" Will started.

"That might kill some of them…" I said reluctantly.

"Channel through me." The Peacemaker appeared behind Fire Court as if by magic. "My powers work at a distance; you can channel through me."

"Mom, your range-."

"It isn't great, but it's better than touch. We can at least get the conscious ones, the ones I can sense. We have to try."

"Use me." A third voice broke into our desperate, frantic brainstorming, a harsh, distorted growl. Painbreaker, looking like death, had pushed her way to my side. The fact that Mom, Will, and Zack let her made quite an impression on Tobias, who had looked nearly ready to attack when she appeared.

"My range is the longest, and anywhere there's pain, conscious or unconscious, I can find it."

No one had time to wonder if this unholy melding of powers was going to work. The conversation had barely taken ten seconds, but that was already ten seconds too long for me. Tobias grabbed my right hand and Mom took my left, Fire Court in a chain behind him, Monica on Mom's other side.

"Now!"

A river, a torrent, a _flood_ of fire poured into me, banishing all exhaustion and cold. In my mind's eye, the battlefield appeared as a field of burning stars, most shadowed, rimed by black pain energy, and illuminated by silver threads connecting them to me. I let the fire roar down the silver threads, burning up the shadows, banishing the darkness. It was amazing, no matter what I did, I didn't get tired; fire kept pouring in, and the heat kept rising in my mind and heart. I would save them all, every single one of them.

Healing had always been an effort for me, but right now I had more power at my command than I had ever dreamed of. All the shadows were nearly gone, and the fires began to gleam like novas in the night sky. Caught up in the euphoria of triumph, knowing that everyone would live, that it hadn't all been for nothing, that we were going to _win_ , I didn't even think about trying to pull back. The play of flame in my mind was mesmerizing, beautiful, a thousand fiery suns in a web of light…

A huge jolt shook me out of the plain of fiery stars, and pain exploded along my jaw. It faded after a second as I looked up to see Guardian standing over me.

"That's _enough!"_ he roared, sounding like he'd been repeating that for a while. I stared at him for another long second, as he caught me up in a fierce hug.

"It's ok, they're ok, just stop," Will said in a more normal tone of voice, letting go of me. "They're ok. We won. We won Warren."

I gasped in sudden pain as my head felt like it was cracking in half.

"Hurts," I whispered, breathing hard as alternating waves of weakness and a sick fever heat washed over me, my skin feeling like it was cracking and shrinking, pulled tight enough over my bones to rip. _"Hurts!"_

My vision went dark and I began to lose my hold on consciousness, an eerie keening coming from my throat in a half-conscious reaction to the incredible pain. Voices pooled and rippled around me, not seeming to come from any one person.

"What's happening to him?" "Don't know!" "We've never concentrated that much force in one person before." "He's convulsing-." "How many?" "Three dozen at least, the burns are extensive, they'll never look the same." "It's a small price to pay…"

"Small price to pay…"

"But we won."

"What about him?"

"If it ends here, he'd be happy."

"They're coming, just hold on!"

"I can't believe it. We won."

 _We won_.

Then everything went dark and silent. But that was all right. We were heroes. And we'd won.


	48. Heroes and Villains

I awoke in a dream, and I knew it. I wished I wasn't; I was so tired even dreaming was making me feel exhausted. All I wanted to do was end the dream and get back to sleep… Or something. My brain wasn't working very well.

"Hello?" I heard someone call. It was an effort to blink, but as I did, the fuzzy world around me came into focus: a meadow filled with short grass, colorful wildflowers, and bright sunshine. A woman robed and veiled in pale gray stood very close to me.

"Hello?" she said again. For some reason that annoyed me.

"Let me sleep," I said tiredly.

"It's time to get up, though; you'll sleep better once you're awake. You're too tired to sleep," she said with gentle insistence.

For some reason that actually made sense.

"Do you know who you are?" she asked kindly.

That question didn't make sense for a while, so I stared at the woman for a long minute until her name came to me.

"The Dreamer."

"You're the Dreamer?" the woman repeated, sounding a little anxious. I shook my head carefully.

"No, _you're_ the Dreamer." That was obvious. That was clearly who she was; I remembered that.

"All right, that's me, so who are _you?_ " she persisted. That was a dumb question. Who else was I supposed to be?

"I'm-," I started, but stopped, a stab of fear piercing me as my mind went blank. My eyes darted around wildly for a second, seeking answers, before alighting on a red wildflower. Red… The color triggered a memory, and it felt like a starburst had taken place in my brain.

"I'm Warren Peace, I'm Phoenix, I'm Phoenix!" I almost shouted, embarrassed that it had taken that long. The woman bowed her head in acquiescence, and I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them, the meadow was filled with long, autumn-gold dried grasses and dozens of flowers in red, orange, and yellow. A crimson sunset bloodied the place with its light, and a warm breeze smelling of woodsmoke washed over me. I breathed it all in for a moment, fatigue slowly lifting from me.

"Phoenix, will you get up now?" The Dreamer's voice was implacable, and I sighed heavily. Then the world slowly dissolved around me.

* * *

When I woke up, for real this time, it was quiet. I was comfortably warm, and since there were no screams of agony or angelic harps, I more or less figured I wasn't dead. But the minute I moved, searing pain lanced across my head.

"Kill me," I groaned mindlessly, hoping whoever was nearest would be merciful. I'd never felt pain like this in my life.

"Sorry, I couldn't do that," a voice whispered. Someone's hand gripped mine, and the pain was gone like someone had flicked a switch. The relief was so incredible that I couldn't talk for a few seconds.

"Monica," I whispered, daring to open my eyes. Monica _was_ at my bedside, and Mom was right next to her, her hands on my arm. Both looked thin and haggard, but still ok. Still alive. Still here.

"Mom, I-," I started, and then actually looked at the arm and hand they were holding. It looked like it belonged to someone else; a thin, emaciated arm from a victim of starvation or a wasting disease. Panic and fear gave me the momentary strength to move my other arm in front of my face. Same thing, same twig-like arm, so weak I couldn't up it up for more than a few seconds.

"What happened?" I said fearfully, my heart starting to pound. I felt a sudden thread of cool calm come between the fear and me as Mom exerted her powers, and my heart rate slowly returned to normal.

"The doctors said it would be very bad for you to panic dearheart," she said in apology. I swallowed hard, looked down at my arm, and then forced myself to only look at Mom and Monica. I was alive, so I didn't need to freak out yet. There were more important things I needed to find out.

"What happened?" I asked more calmly. "Is everyone ok? Did we lose anyone?" I didn't think we had been lucky enough to defeat the academy without losses, but since together we had pulled off some crazy healing stunt, I had hope. Mom and Monica hesitated at my question, and my heart sank.

"We didn't lose anyone after you began healing," Mom started. There was fatigue and pain in both her and Monica's faces, and I began to wonder how long I'd been out. I'd only seen that look on Mom's face when she came from a really long job.

"Damn it," I said weakly. "Who? How?"

"Son of Silver killed Diamond, Seawalker, and Crimson Tempus before Sonic Boom was able to stop him. Cutter gutted Sonic Boom for hurting her boyfriend, and then got Silver out before the weapons activated. She took Bloodtalon, Skybolt, Viper, and Saurian Lord along with them. They're still at large," Monica said tiredly.

I only knew Diamond and Seawalker by reputation, but the deaths of Boomer and Crimson Tempus floored me. Boomer had always seemed indestructible; as our gym teacher, he threw his weight around plenty of times, but had come through for us in the clutch. Training us, working out a whole new program to toughen us up to face the academy in record time, never letting up on us (even if he was sometimes a dick about it), he'd never let us down. And Crimson Tempus, the Maxville Bureau director, had seemed about as easy to hurt as a brick wall. I'd never had the occasion to see him in action, but had heard plenty of stories.

"There were four academy villains in front of the death ray when it went off, and Iceangel and Cool Cross were caught in the disintegration beam. There was nothing anyone could have done for them," Monica continued.

 _Christ._ Iceangel was Melissa Frost, the cryokinetic from my class at Sky High. The girl who'd danced with me at my sophomore Homecoming…

"The splitter beam just barely winged the Geogods, and Stonehenge lost an arm. He pulled through though."

Stonehenge… Larry the rock guy from Will's class. _Damn._

"After the battle, we found Psion, Mindmelt, and Brainshock's bodies in one of the inner chambers. Not a mark on them; the doctors said their brains were overloaded from massive neural shock. It looks like a stroke if you've never seen the loser in a psychic battle before."

"Were they fighting each other or one of us?" I asked.

"Warren, they found Dallas-."

"Damn it."

"Wait, he's all right. The Dreamer managed to get him to wake up. He doesn't remember much, which is probably just as well. But Tracy and Elise-."

"No," I whispered, but Monica continued on mercilessly.

"They woke up in their own bodies about five minutes before the battle, grabbed the nearest person, dumped a few years' worth of academy information in their head, and then vacated again. They never woke up, and they died a half-hour later," she said quietly.

I turned my head away for a second, swallowing hard. They had been so close to getting out... Why had they leapt back into a psychic duel? But if Psion, Mindmelt, and Brainshock had been free to stir up people during the actual fight, a lot more people could have died. And who else knew enough about them to fight them on their own turf? Tracy and Elise had made the same decision I had, but they hadn't lived through it.

"Anyone else?" I asked, turning to face Monica again.

"No one else died. A lot of the villains escaped, but some surrendered, and a few defected. Some of those were lying, we found out when the Mentalist and the Peacemaker interviewed them, and they've already been tried and jailed with the others that were caught. There weren't any critical injuries after you got done, so everyone else lived," she concluded.

I stared at both of them, eyes starting to burn. I was still too tired to be stoic and hold back tears, not when there was a suffocating lump in my throat. It was futile to try to hide it from those two, and they closed in on my, pulling me into a tight embrace, not letting me cry alone. Eight heroes and seven villains had died during the culmination of our brilliant plan, not to mention the three shapeshifter Bureau spies who had been killed earlier, and who knew how many other failed villains that didn't make the grade. All of them dead.

It didn't matter that I hadn't known some of them at all. For a few minutes, when I had been in that healing trance, I had been _connected_ to hundreds of people. I'd known Boomer for years, and Crimson Tempus peripherally for almost as long. Melissa Frost had ended up as a friendly acquaintance at school, and Tracy and Elise… All the people I hadn't known, now I never would. Maybe I wouldn't have liked some of them, but now I'd never get the chance.

I wasn't going to carry their deaths on my shoulders; we'd been damn lucky to only have fifteen people die during that battle. It could have easily been fifty. Or fifteen hundred. But they were fellow human beings, and I cried because they deserved something more than what they'd gotten.

I didn't have the strength to cry for very long, but it still seemed a long time later when I finally ran dry. Mom and Monica passed around tissues and water as all three of us tried to get back under control. At least I didn't need to explain myself to them; they both understood completely. Mom sighed, knowing there was still a lot to go over, and I nodded, ready for more news.

"The Bureau is still figuring out what to do with the people who genuinely defected. They wanted to wait until you'd woken up," Mom said finally, with a slight sideways flicker of her eyes towards Monica. Well, since Monica was _here_ and not in a prison cell somewhere, she must have managed to convince them of her sincerity. But I didn't know what they'd want to do with her afterward.

"They've already debriefed me, and everyone else too. I… told them everything we'd done, but they still want to hear your version," Monica said, her hand still tight on mine. I guessed the Bureau wouldn't have taken Monica's word on faith, but I'd been futilely hoping I wouldn't have to rehash this whole nightmare so soon.

"Wait, Will and the guys-," I said suddenly, looking past Mom to see cards and flowers littering the table behind her. Amongst them was the voodoo lily Layla had given me for Christmas a few years ago, and I realized I had almost expected to see the gang here.

"Are out on a call," Mom said instantly. "At least one of them was here around the clock the entire time you were out, Will most of all. But with people still recovering, the Champions have to cover a bit more territory than normal, that's all. They'll check back here as soon as they're done."

"Recovering? Who's still-? And why-? How long was I out? And what happened to me?" I spewed out the barrage of questions rapidly, the need to know overriding whatever calming effect Mom had on me.

"Warren…" Mom said in warning, and I took three deep breaths. When I was back under control, she started talking. "You've been out for two and a half weeks."

"Weeks?!" I nearly sputtered.

"Do you remember dreaming?" she asked. I blinked and thought about it. Then my heart nearly stopped. The appearance of The Dreamer in that last odd dream hadn't just been for the kind of information dissemination that it had been while I was in the academy. First and foremost, The Dreamer was known for using her power on the comatose and catatonic to get them to wake up. That gave me an inkling of how bad off I had been.

"Yeah. I- Jesus," I got out.

"Possibly. As for the rest of your questions, Dr. Egret wanted to fill you in on that," she said.

"I-. Ok," I said, trying to get myself to relax again. What was left of my muscles was trembling with the effort of maintaining me even sitting up in bed (albeit heavily propped with pillows).

Dr. Egret popped into the room so fast I realized she must have been listening in the entire time. Then again, if I'd been out two and a half weeks, I should consider myself lucky that Mom and Monica hadn't been swept aside immediately so she could do more medical tests on me. At least she'd given me that.

The doctor pulled up a chair to sit on the other side of the bed, and regarded me frankly with her bird-black eyes.

"Phoenix, first thing first, you _will_ make a full recovery. Once you start eating on your own instead of having you on a nutrient drip, you'll start to get your strength back," she said, her voice high and fluting.

I shrugged vaguely at the news. There's not much that can permanently disable someone with indestructibility, and recovery for anything short of an instant death-wound is only a matter of time. Not that that matter of time couldn't be excruciatingly painful and unpleasant though.

"Second, and to answer your other questions, suffice to say I wouldn't take your powers if you paid me." Since the last time we'd spoken she'd basically been envious of my abilities, this was a hell of an about-face. I looked at her slightly in shock.

"Now, as to what happened to you," she continued, nodding at my emaciated body. "It's very lucky that in your destruction of the academy computers, you managed to miss some of the memory banks. We have very little hard data on your healing ability in action. You've never gone through formal testing at our labs, so the only information we really had on how your powers work was the information from that Gauntlet run almost four years ago.

"The academy, by the by, had an excellent sensor array that was active during your rather impressive show of power. All of that was recorded, and we were eventually able to interpret the data to some interesting conclusions. That was augmented by the personal testimonies of everyone I could find who has experienced your healing first-hand. I was finally able to piece together exactly what you were doing.

"Ok…" I said a little impatiently.

"On a basic level, you transfer energy from yourself to another, and encourage the body to use that energy to heal damage faster."

"Yeah, Nurse Spex told me that years ago," I pointed out.

"But you found it to be difficult. Control was hard, it was difficult to trance, and you could only really do it for very severe things. So you eventually learned meditation techniques, and how to focus your concentration better. It made it easier to use your power, but you found it was much easier to burn people by accident."

"Yeah…" I said slowly, feeling slightly uncomfortable at hearing her bald recitation.

"After reviewing the data from the academy sensors, it became clearer what you were doing with your ability. You were giving parts of your personal power away."

" _What?"_ I asked incredulously. I was remembering my mom's words, about how my ancestor Margaret Peace had given away so much of herself that she'd died. How much had I given away? And where? To who?

"The harder you try to concentrate, the more of your personal power is brought to bear on the injury at hand. The more power you pour into someone, the more the fire works to burn hotter, trying to match its source. Phoenix, you were trying to make people like you. That's why you burned people," she said earnestly.

"Like me?" I said ingeniously, but Egret kept talking.

"Yes. At any rate, your incredible effort to convert several hundred people into pyrokinetics, even with the massive assistance from Fire Court, forced your body to marshal every reserve, even cannibalizing itself. If you hadn't been indestructible, if Guardian hadn't shaken you out of your trance, you would have just gone up in flames and died. And unlike the classical phoenix, there wouldn't have been any rebirth from the ashes," she said severely. Then she got a thoughtful look on her face. "Or at least not in the traditional sense."

My inquiring glance begged a further explanation from her.

"It might be possible, if the person or persons you were healing were strong enough, that you could literally give all your power to them before you burned up entirely. You could pass your abilities onto someone else, even someone that didn't have powers before. That's only a theory, mind you. And we're not going to test that, ever," she added sharply.

"Did I give-? Do people have-?" I started, not sure how to phrase what I wanted to know.

"As far as I'm aware, you are still the only one with your powers. You might have been giving away your fire, but you still make more. And it seems as if you have a lot to give," Dr. Egret said, her eyes softening. "Fire Court didn't experience the adverse effects to the same extent you did. They were all on their feet within a day or so. You bore the brunt of the damage, it seems.

"Now," she said, "about people recovering. Though you saved hundreds from death, your rather uninhibited use of your powers did have some side effects on everyone you healed. Most had burns where their wounds were. They're all fine; they'll have scars, but they're alive, and thankful to be so. Your… friend Ms. Keller was helping them with the pain until they healed up."

I squeezed Monica's hand, and felt her grip mine hard in return. It would be hard for the Bureau to argue against her if she'd just spent the last two and a half weeks helping injured superheroes. I didn't know what the Bureau had in store for her, but as a former supervillain she always hedged her bets, making sure they'd have evidence of her reformation in front of their own eyes. And I knew she thought it was the right thing to do.

"I haven't found any evidence of even a mild power-transfer to any of your 'patients,' if you were worried about that. Some people reported having dreams about fire, but there's been no evidence of spontaneous pyrokinesis or personality contamination," Egret finished briskly. I sighed in relief, as she gently laid her white, feathered hand on mine.

She looked into the middle distance for a moment, and nodded. I realized she must be invoking her own minor healing ability, though I couldn't feel anything but a faint cool tickle, like a feather stroking across my chest. In an instant, it was gone.

"As I thought. No long-term damage. Joy, would you help me get some food for you son? It'd be best if you fed yourself from now on," Dr. Egret said. "Once you've started to get to a healthy weight, you're going to have to exercise to get your strength back, but you're well on the road to recovery."

With that, Egret and Mom left, leaving me alone with Monica.

"You doing ok?" I asked her, reaching out weakly with my free hand to run it through her thick, dark hair. She captured that hand too, and I could feel her trying to repress a tremble.

"Better now. Better that you're awake. Better that we're out."

Out from where didn't need an explanation. Other than the headache I'd had, I now felt like I could think without wondering if I was going to go near-homicidal at least twice a day.

"I hear you. How are people…?" I asked delicately.

"How are people treating me? Not too badly. I'm _here,_ for one. And they didn't mind when I could help them. I'm luckier than anyone else but Duke. Meduka," she clarified. "The others were all supervillains in public. I was never actually officially Painbreaker, so I have that going for me. Your friends were watching me like hawks though," she said, and I could see the weeks of tension in her eyes. Being inside the Bureau, nder constant surveillance and scrutiny, had to be one of the toughest things she'd done. Just facing all those disapproving eyes…

"What about the other guys?" I asked. Meduka, Flamewing, Voidhammer, Nightsteed, Bruin, and the technopaths had been as much responsible for our success as any of us.

"They're dealing. They've spent most of their time being questioned."

"You too?" I asked.

"Yes…" she said haltingly.

"What?" I pressed. Monica swallowed and looked down for a second, before locking eyes with me.

"You were so close Warren, closer than I wanted to see you. Close to going over. I had to tell them that," she said. I felt a chill creep up my spine. "But I didn't tell them I had plans in case that happened."

"What kind of plans?" I asked in a kind of horrified fascination. I knew I had been close to some kind of psychotic break while I was in the academy, but the idea of coming up with yet another plan to contain myself if that had happened had been laughable to me. What could _I_ have done?

"It depended on how strong I was. If you cracked and went dark side, I figured I could do one of two things. I could do a Bonnie and Clyde if I was weak. Or a Thelma and Louise if I was strong enough to spare us both being taken down by your friends," she said, her gaze never wavering.

It felt like a palpable hit, like something had just stolen my breath. She'd been ready to either go along with me, or kill us both, if I'd flipped out.

"Sorry, that was probably unnecessarily creepy," she said, looking down and starting to withdraw her hand. I held it, and she stopped.

"No, it's not. I get it," I said, and ducked my head a little until she looked up at me. "Thanks."

Yes, it was probably extremely weird that I was thanking her for being willing to carry out something like that. But if I'd gone around the bend and hurt my friends or family… I'd have never forgiven myself if I'd killed someone. And Monica knew that.

"I love you," I said softly.

"Me too," she said, smiling. Then she paused and shook her head, grinning. "We have really strange lives."

"No joke."

Mom returned soon afterward with enough food to feed a small army, and I quickly discovered I'd never been so hungry before in my life. Even eating slowly, as she insisted, I still managed to clear the tray in record time. After that arduous exercise, fatigue overcame me again, and this time I didn't dream.

* * *

The next time I woke up, it was with someone calling my name.

"Warren! You're awake!"

I blinked myself into full consciousness quickly, feeling marginally less wasted than before, to see Will and the gang piling into my room. Will quickly crossed over to give me a careful hug as the others were all talking at once, crowding around my bed. And for once, I didn't mind at all. Not the chaos, not the crowding, not the questioning; nothing. Being surrounded by my friends was the best thing that'd happened to me in a while.

"Naw, I'm sleepwalking Stronghold," I quipped back, returning Will's embrace weakly. I realized belatedly that I was only doing it with one hand, as Monica was still holding my other one. Oddly enough, no one seemed to be inhibited by her presence. There weren't any awkward silences or deliberate back-turnings.

"The Peacemaker said you were up finally. You ok?" Will asked anxiously.

"Dude, you look like hell," Zack opined frankly, and Magenta kicked him reflexively in the ankle.

"Dr. Egret says I'll get better," I said with a shrug. "I don't know how long, but…"

"You were really brave Warren," Layla spoke up, leaning over to give me a kiss on the forehead.

"That was an excellent plan," Ethan added. "Some of the other heroes were trying to come up with ray-neutralizers and things, but nothing would have been ready in time. No one thought anyone could pull a real inside job like that."

"Yeah, and when did you put those maps in my room? Last movie night?" Zack asked.

"Monica did. It was her plan," I said, and then turned to look at her. She smiled slightly, and I turned back to my friends to make it official.

"Guys, this is Monica Keller, my girlfriend."

"We've met," Will said, his expression mostly neutral. "Recently, I mean." He gave an expansive shrug that I took to mean he'd forgiven me for scaring everyone so badly. _And_ for dating a supervillain.

"We've been going out for years," I clarified. "For about a year after I graduated."

"You lying sack of-. I knew I should have gone Yellowstone on your ass!" Magenta huffed, though it lacked the characteristic full heat of her scorn. "Happy, skippy Warren didn't come out of nowhere."

"'Happy, skippy Warren?'" Monica repeated incredulously, and my friends snickered.

"So… how did this, you know, _happen?_ " Layla asked. Monica and I exchanged glances, and then bowed to inevitable. They definitely deserved to know.

We told them, over the course of the next hour or so, how we had managed to meet, get involved, and then found ourselves closer than friends. I didn't want my friends to hate Monica. Hell, I wanted them to like her. And it was clear that she'd had more than just casual interaction with them during the time I'd been out. Monica hadn't ever really left my room, and my friends rarely did. None of them were particularly good at doing the stoic silence thing (I had the lock on that title), so eventually some kind of conversation would ensue. And they found her to be… not quite so bad.

I guessed we could all live with that.

Things were winding down to the uncomfortable silence stage when I decreed a change of topic was in order. There were a few things I needed to know more about.

"Will, Dr. Egret told me I sort of went overboard-," I began, and Will nodded a little. "You were hurt, weren't you?"

"Yeah. Someone had some kind of super-duty anti-tank grenade launcher. They pointed it at Mom, so I went to intercept. I think I broke some ribs or something," he said, looking away a little. Then he sighed and tugged his shirt up on the side to show the scar. What had been a gash was now replaced with an almost artistic slash of dark red burn scar tissue; the skin looking melted and recooled. And I could tell, even from a foot away, that the scar was hotter than the rest of him.

"It doesn't hurt at all. It's warm, but I think that's normal for this," Will said, pulling his shirt back down and tucking it in.

"Normal," I said, snorting at the ridiculousness of it all, and Will cracked a smile.

"Same thing happened to me too," Zack offered, and I belatedly recalled he'd taken a bullet graze to the upper arm. Rolling up his sleeve, he had the same dark red scar tracing over the wound.

"Was anyone…? Did anyone have…? Did anyone have head wounds?" I asked, feeling a little guilty.

"A couple of people," Layla said with a resigned expression. "Warren, really, don't worry about it. Everyone's happy to be alive. And we're happy you are, all right?"

I looked at my friends, and finally smiled broadly. We'd come out of a total disaster with nearly everything intact. And that was worth the world.

"Thanks guys, for everything."

"Anytime Warren," Will said.

* * *

After my friends had left, three Bureau agents descended upon Monica and me. Apparently it was debriefing time, whether I was up for it or not.

"Ms. Keller, if you wouldn't mind waiting outside?" one of them suggested politely, his whole demeanor and appearance shouting "generic government agent."

"If you'd like him coherent, I'll have to stay. He has a migraine," she said a bit testily. She hadn't been away from me for close to three weeks; someone telling her she had to leave had to be hard.

The three agents looked at each other and nodded.

"Your powers work with line-of-sight, don't they?" the same one asked reasonably. Monica looked like she'd just swallowed a lemon, nodded, and then stood up to leave, flipping open the shades to the corridor window as she went. When the door clicked shut, the Bureau agents simultaneously grabbed chairs and sat with their backs to the door.

I stared at them in silence, half-buried in the pillows, and wondered what kind of crap I was going to have to answer for now. The Bureau had a habit of beating a dead horse even after it had been buried, upon occasion, and a play-by-play rehashing of what had been both the best (in terms of helping those people who'd never wanted to be villains) and worst week of my life was not something I wanted to do fifteen times in a row. Monica had said they only wanted my reactions to events, but I didn't think we'd be that lucky.

"Agents Smith," the middle one said by way of introduction, waving at his two cohorts. I looked over at them and did a triple take; quite literally, the three men were identical.

"Trio?" I asked, and the Agents Smith nodded. A multiplier superhero sort of like Penny, Trio had gone inactive nearly a decade ago.

"In the fleshes. Phoenix, this shouldn't take very long. I'm going to go over what I know, and then you can fill in the blanks-."

"Just you guys?" I interrupted. I couldn't believe the Bureau was going to let me off the hook with just an interview. The Agents Smith looked at each other briefly.

"What would you have said if we insisted on bringing in a psychic to verify what you said?"

"Go to hell," I said instantly.

The Smiths shrugged with remarkable equanimity.

"We did pay attention to statements from The Dreamer and Ms. Keller. So it'll be just us. Phoenix, you've already given your pound of flesh, and then some, to the cause. We aren't entirely without heart," they said, and I relaxed marginally. Despite the name, the Bureau wasn't a true bureaucracy, mostly because it consisted of and was run by super-powered men and women with very high moral standards. There was a whole lot of government protocol and red tape that didn't exist in the Bureau of Superpowered Affairs. This was living proof of that; real government agents didn't have hearts.

I told them what they needed to know, as simply and honestly as I could, explaining the gaps in their own dead-accurate narrative. I seriously doubted they could have understood all of it, like why I'd come close to snapping more than once, why I'd contemplated murderous violence, or gone into near-psychotic fits. But I told them anyway. In this respect, I was glad Monica wasn't there to hear it. I was brutally honest with the agents, so they'd maybe understand that if I could nearly go postal in a week, what long-term academy residents like Monica had had to deal with.

A half-hour later, the Smiths were gone, though looking mildly shell-shocked at what I'd told them, and Monica was back in the room like a shot.

"You were right," I told her. "Just the blanks. They believed you."

An amazing expression of relief spread across her face, and I lifted a weak hand to pull her in for a kiss.

* * *

I wasn't up for dealing with much more than supper and sleep, but apparently there was one more float left in the parade. Right after dinner, there was another visitor.

Monica's head snapped up as Tobias Battle walked into my room without even a knock. I wasn't particularly surprised; Tobias acted like he owned everything, whether he actually did nor not. It was all part of his image, like me and my leather jacket.

"Ah, there you are. And conscious no less," he said, his chin raised so he could look down his nose at me in an undeniably arrogant manner. I almost broke out laughing, and Tobias could see my hard-repressed smile.

"You too. Are you ok?" I asked to prevent myself from snickering. It actually wasn't that funny, but for some reason I was finding this hilarious. I think I needed more rest.

To be fair, Tobias did look thinner than I remembered, and there was significantly more silver in his hair.

"Well enough, Warren," he said with more solemnity, crossing to sit in an empty chair. He patted Monica absently on the shoulder, and I nearly gave my eyes whiplash going back and forth between them. "I apologize that I wasn't here when you woke up, but my children were out on a call. Besides, you needed your mother and Monica more than me."

"Ah…" I stalled, trying to figure out what to say. Tobias broke the awkwardness by taking my free hand firmly in his grasp, like he was congratulating me, and igniting it. The heat pulsed from his hand to mine, pyro to pyro, kin to kin, warming me down to the core. I let my own fire flow across my hand, and squeezed his as hard as I could.

"You've made the Battle family very proud grandson," Tobias said solemnly. When my dad had used the same words years ago, it had made me nearly incoherent with rage. In my mind there had been no Battle family, just Mom and me against the world. Now I realized this was what it felt like to have a family standing behind you. The whole Battle family had unhesitatingly thrown themselves into a fight they didn't have to, just to try to save me. Fire Court had, without reservation, and damn well knowing the consequences, given me everything they had.

The Peace family had spoken for me during that week in the academy without any solid proof of my innocence, even if they'd never met me. The Dreamer had thrown her powers into the gauntlet of the academy psi-shields in order to try to keep me safe and informed. Both her and her brother had kept me from being forced into taking Egret's offer just before I'd gone into the academy.

This was how Zack, Magenta, or Ethan felt, knowing there were a dozen people or more tied to you blood, who'd help you for no other reason than family. I'd made my own family with my friends, but now I had all the Peaces and Battles behind me too. For someone who'd once thought it'd be just Mom and me against the world forever, I'd come a long way.

"Thanks Gramps," I said, a genuine smile breaking out. Tobias pulled me into a hard embrace for a long moment before finally letting me go. He didn't quite look emotional when he pulled away, but there was something in his face that let me know he had just gotten something he never thought he'd get.

"Gramps?" he asked though, an eyebrow raised quizzically.

"Either that or Grandpappy," I pointed out. Tobias sighed in tolerant exasperation, and turned to look at Monica.

"Do try to keep him in line, will you dear?" he asked, rising up out of his chair and kissing the back of her hand formally. I was more than a little flabbergasted at that, because I remembered Emberkeeper nearly attacking Painbreaker on the battlefield. Tobias simply gave me a Look as he strode to the door.

"People having conversations when you're not around, forging relationship when you're not aware, keeping secrets… Why in the world would that bother you?" he asked rhetorically.

"Touché," I commented. Tobias, his parting shot having hit its mark, swept out of the room, head proudly high.

* * *

It took me almost another two weeks to get back to normal. I ate like I was hollow, and as soon as I was back to walking, spent nearly every moment I wasn't eating in the gym, trying to get my strength back. I hadn't worked so hard since I was ten years old and bound and determined to protect myself from bullying classmates. Luckily the headaches stopped shortly after I was able to feed myself, or otherwise Monica would have had to stay with me the entire time. Painkillers (and indeed most drugs) were notoriously ineffective on pyrokinetics.

Mom, my friends, and the rest of my family couldn't always be around either. Though I was temporarily inactive, they had work to do; the supervillains of the world hadn't taken a break just because the academy was gone. My friends were needed constantly, and I didn't begrudge them a second of time in doing their jobs.

Besides, Monica and I couldn't stay joined at the hip forever. We'd helped destroy the academy, but there was a whole lot more to sort out before there could be a happy ending. Filling in the final blanks to the Bureau guys was just one piece in the puzzle. Monica and the others who had helped us were being dragged away for conferences that would last for hours. She had said, reluctantly, that she wasn't supposed to talk about them. Mom, who was clearly one of the several in charge of these things, was also being closed-mouthed about them.

"This is an unusual situation, and believe me, they have a lot to work out on their own," she'd pointed out.

I didn't like being separated from Monica, not after all we'd been through, but she knew as well as I that something like this would happen if we'd managed to pull off the attack on the academy. I made a couple of attempts to hunt her up while I was still pretty weak, which resulted in the gang finding someone to stay with me to keep me from doing something stupid. That someone turned out to be Ethan's fiancé Chloe. Six-foot-eleven Chloe with the black belt in karate, who, while happy to help out, was mildly annoyed at having to study in the little chairs in my hospital room.

I kept my ass in bed after that.

* * *

By the time I'd been cleared to return to the field the Agents Smith told me that the full Superhero Council was going to assemble the next day. The _full_ Council. That wasn't good news at all. At this point, I didn't know if I was going to be punished, reprimanded, or rewarded. No one had given me any hints at all; as a matter of fact they'd been annoying neutral about the whole thing. But when Mom came for me after the Smiths had left, I knew I was going to get some sort of insight.

She was in her costume as the Peacemaker, but shook her head subtly when I automatically reached for my own outfit. For some reason that gave me a lump of cold in my stomach. Without talking, she lead me to one of the myriad conference rooms, where Monica, and our five ex-villain allies were all seated around the table, all of them out of costume. They all looked tired and a little jumpy, and started visibly when Mom and I walked in. I wondered, as I had often in the past two weeks, just what had been going on behind closed doors.

"I just need you as a witness, Warren," Mom murmured, and awkwardly I went to sit in a chair against the wall. There was another long moment of silence as the Peacemaker regarded the bevy of ex-supervillains with a complex expression of pity and determination. Most of them started to squirm.

"We've gotten some information about the academy psychics and what they did to you. It explains a lot about your actions, and how you ended up in a place far different than you'd ever thought you'd be," she opened, and I could see a minute relaxation in everyone. "The mental manipulation was fairly subtle and generally short-term, but applied constantly over a long period of time. Think of it like slow mental acid. It was particularly effective on those who were already vulnerable from anger or fear, and Royal Pain made certain each of you was in one of those states before bringing you into the academy."

Monica and the others looked around at each other for a second in confusion, before the Peacemaker continued, looking relentless. I realized that all the cards were about to hit the table, and unfortunately Mom was holding the aces.

"The psychics went to work on you and every other person in the academy, increasing violent tendencies, shortening tempers, eroding senses of morality, and lowering inhibitions."

Monica looked mortified and buried her head in her hands. I had a flashback to her out-of-character pressuring for sex when we were both in the academy and must have turned tomato red. From similar expressions on everyone else's faces, we weren't the only ones who'd been in that situation.

"Dear, not all of this was your fault," the Peacemaker said to Monica, her voice calm.

"But some of it was?" Monica asked, her voice muffled.

"All of us are capable of anything, given the right circumstances. For you, certain acts were forced upon you by your circumstances, over and over again."

"And I did them because I'm weak," Monica finished, looking up. I kept my mouth shut, as I figured Mom had some reason for wanting to pry at Monica after all this time. This wasn't just for her benefit, but for the rest of the ex-villains as well. But it wasn't going to be pretty. Mom wanted me for a witness… because she needed to do something fairly hardcore. It would help, because Mom always helped, but I knew what hell Monica had gone through two years ago when the Peacemaker had helped put her mind back together. This was going to be along the same lines of brutality. The Council, I realized, must have something huge planned. And it better be worth it for what they were putting her through.

"You had four years in that place, and the psychics knew where and how to strike to make you twitch," the Peacemaker elaborated.

"What are you trying to tell us?" Monica demanded, knowing Mom's words were as applicable to the others as they were to her. "Is it our fault or isn't it?"

"You were mentally manipulated Monica, all of you were. But not until you were brought into the academy," the Peacemaker pointed out.

"So now we're just dupes?" Monica asked angrily.

"No one was immune to what had been done to you. But you all attracted Royal Pain's attention _before_ she got you to the academy. Assault and battery, destruction of property, arson, torture, and murder you all did of your own free will. You need to understand this, and realize why you need to pay everything back.

"I refuse to absolve any of you for your personal responsibility in all of this. I know it's not fair to you, but I want you to feel guilt, and grief, and uncertainty about this. Monica, I want you to remember how you went from college student, to self-serving torturer, to supervillain, to spy, to hero. I need the rest of you to remember the gratitude on the faces of those you saved. I want you to remember how easy it was to sink into the darkness, and how much better it is here in the light," the Peacemaker concluded, locking eyes with each person in turn, ending with mine.

Mom hadn't said anything directly to me, but she didn't have to. Monica was a lot farther along in her recovery than any of the others, and she would be the one to convince them to try something new. And I might need to help _her_ , if she needed it.

There was also something I realized that I needed to do, once the Bureau had figured out what it wanted to do with the ex-villains. And that we'd find out tomorrow.

Mom pulled me out of the conference room, leaving Monica and the others to talk.

"Let them come to their own conclusions, Warren. They'll be better for it," she warned, as I half-turned back to the door.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, and Mom let go of my sleeve.

"So I better get ready?" I asked.

"For anything," she cautioned.

* * *

It was the first time I'd worn my costume in a month, and it felt almost strange on me. Someone had replaced the cracked armor plates and repaired the damage from bullets, rocks, and rubble. It seemed almost brand new, which fit my state of mind very well. I knew that when I walked out of the Council Chamber, I wouldn't be the same as when I walked in.

I was one of the last to arrive, and walked to the center of the stage to be joined by the Peacemaker, Painbreaker, Meduka, Flamewing, Nightsteed, Voidhammer, and Bruin, all in costume. The technopaths, who'd never _had_ costumes, were huddled over to one side. The Council Chamber was just as I remembered from the Dreamer's visions, but for once it was _completely_ full, practically to the rafters. It was so full that I wondered who was stopping crime.

The answer to that came when I was looking over the dignitaries at the front table. There was the usual bevy of Bureau directors, with Head Director Halo Star in the middle, but on the end was a colorless, androgynous figure in pale silver and blue, holding a tall white staff with an hourglass swinging from the top. That was Chronotrypsis, the Timekeeper; one of the most powerful people on the planet, and very rarely seen, Chronotrypsis only appeared when there was something of earth-shattering importance going on. He could literally stop time, giving the Council the ability to deal with the aftermath of the academy without some villainous plot slipping through the cracks. Right now, beyond these walls, the world was at a standstill.

How the hell did this meeting rate Chronotrypsis' attention? It was important to me, damn important, but not rock-the-world, apocalyptic kind of important. Why have the full Council here? Either they felt the need to impress Monica and the others… Or things were in play that I didn't know about, and we were much worse off than I realized.

I found myself praying the Council was just going for theatricality.

Next to me, Monica was very still inside her costume, though the other ex-villains were visibly fidgeting. In the seats just behind me the Champions of Justice, the Peace family, and the Battle clan were arrayed in colorful rows. I could feel their support behind me, like having a solid rock under my feet, and knew the academy guys must have been feeling like they were drowning. I hoped the Council would get it over with quickly, whatever it was.

Halo Star stood up, and the quiet conversations around the room stopped. Despite the superheroic obsession with costumes and catchphrases, superheroes, as a rule, have little patience for rambling speeches that go nowhere. We leave that to supervillain monologuing. So there wasn't a formal call to start, or ratting off of business. Halo Star just leapt in to the heart of the matter; approaching a judgment in the same brisk manner he'd rescue a citizen.

"Phoenix," he boomed, "there are some on this Council who'd say we should be stripping you and the Peacemaker of your hero names for associating with known villains. However, you did it with the best of intentions and results. Though your audacious actions you've helped dismantle Royal Pain's supervillain academy and saved more lives than we will ever know. You freed dozens of people from what amounted to slavery, and unhesitatingly risked your life and sanity to save those that would have died. You've done the impossible, because you didn't know it was beyond your reach, and succeeded where others have failed. You've been a true hero."

I bowed my head slightly, lightheaded with relief.

"Peacemaker…" Halo Star trailed off, and I looked back up at him. He was smiling indulgently at Mom, and she was staring back at him, her chin high. There was no deference in her stance; it was all challenge. "You could have told us the truth."

"You would have overreacted. It all turned out well, didn't it?" the Peacemaker asked reasonably. A few people in the audience snickered. Halo Star's mouth twitched slightly, and then he nodded.

"You can trust us to believe you Peacemaker," he said, and Mom gave him a short bow. I knew she'd been afraid to lose everything she'd gained by revealing that she knew Monica was in Maxville. But with everything that'd happened, the Council had been able to see beyond any of Mom's past mistakes. She wouldn't let them bully her anymore.

"Painbreaker, for your previous offences, for your acts of torture, for participating in attempted assassinations, espionage, and kidnapping, we can offer no clemency. Flamewing, for your previous offences of arson, Nightsteed, for your previous offences of assault and battery, Meduka, Voidhammer, and Bruin, for your previous offences of manslaughter and murder, we can offer no clemency," Halo Star boomed, his voice and face like stone. The Council Chamber went silent, and I nearly spoke, but Halo Star ran right on top of me.

"However, it has been made clear to me that you truly regret your actions, and some of your crimes were undertaken to help the cause of right. Also, we understand the effect powers can have one's personality. Pyros are hot-tempered, mind-readers are understanding, empaths are sympathetic; it goes with the territory. And understandably Royal Pain convinced you that you had little choice but to go along with her wishes or suffer at our hands.

"We know the psychics at the academy were responsible for pressuring you into a specific mold, honed by a sadistic system of punishments and rewards. Finally, you all risked your life and freedom in a successful attempt to destroy the academy as we know it, forever.

"Painbreaker, you spent years prior to the academy attack aiding Phoenix, not only in the defeat of many supervillains, but at lessening the pain of hundreds of patients that you transported in your cover job as an EMT."

Gasps sounded around the room, and I saw Monica rock back on her heels.

"Phoenix, this was your cover job as well, and you used very unorthodox techniques to not only neutralize Painbreaker's threat, but to also help her overcome her many problems. With help from the Peacemaker, you were able to break her mental conditioning, and allow her to make her own decisions on where to stand."

Unconsciously I reached out my hand for Monica's, and found hers already searching for mine. We clasped hands, not unbeknownst to Halo Star, or the rest of the Council for that matter.

"You all have power," he continued to the ex-villains. "And power, once claimed, cannot be discarded, hidden, or wished away. If you don't take sides in the fight, the fight will come to you." Which it had; most of these guys had tried to conceal their powers at first. While their chosen uses of their powers hadn't been good, none of them had sought public attention. Royal Pain had dragged them into it. If they tried to go back to civilian life, some supervillain would come calling some day.

"It's clear where you all stand," Halo Star said, eyes raking over the ex-villains, and resting on our clasped hands. His voice had a hint of amusement in it, and Monica squeezed my hand tightly.

"However, we are at an impasse. We cannot simply forgive what you've done. But your actions this past months show us that you've chosen to do something different in your life." The assembled former supervillains were looking at their shoes, waiting for the axe to fall. I felt my eyes start to widen as I got an inkling of what the Bureau agents might have been discussing with them over the past few weeks.

"Considering where you've lived and what you've experienced over the past few years, putting you in prison would be an improvement, or even a vacation. And you have all shown genuine remorse for your past crimes."

I stopped breathing for a minute at Halo Star's next words.

"We would have you instead become superheroes, and pay your debt to those you've hurt by saving the lives of others."

Pandemonium erupted in the Council Chamber, and I half-expected Boomer to step up and shout everyone into silence. With a pang I remembered Boomer was dead, and it took Comet flying to the center of the room, her brilliant light distracting everyone into silence, before order could be restored. Halo Star gave her a look of gratitude as he continued.

"We know some of you lack control, and we will help you with your powers. You are also not the only ones who will be offered this chance," and here he paused to give the technopaths a significant glance, "but in a short time we expect you will be the first ones ready to stand as the world's newest heroes. Because of your past, there will be people watching, but we will not hover over you. You will be compensated, like we are, but much of what you make will go the families of those affected by your past crimes. You can use your powers as you see fit to serve, and no one will dictate to you how they can be used. Your actions will be your own."

 _Translation,_ I thought, _no one will be asking you to do our dirty work for us._ Just because we were superheroes didn't mean we sometimes wished we could take the easy way out. Halo Star was reassuring them they weren't going to become our "tame" supervillains.

"Putting you with other superheroes would be counterproductive. You wouldn't know them, and they might not trust you. You might grow to resent them, and that would be a disaster for everyone. We would like you to form your own superhero team, all six of you."

 _All six of you,_ I repeated mentally, feeling a pang. I'd remember saying that Monica could join up with me, once the whole thing with the academy was over. I'd never thought about how that would work in reality. How could I leave the Champions? How could I leave my friends? How could I have asked them to have Painbreaker join us?

Halo Star seemed to be waiting for a response, and to my surprise, Bruin spoke up first.

"That's fair," he said, wonder in his deep voice. "We've never gotten fair before."

He shot a glance at the others, and nodded at Halo Star.

"Yeah, I'll do it," Nightsteed said, his voice cracking.

"Me too." "Yeah." "Hell of a better deal," the others chimed in. Monica, trembling, also nodded her assent.

"I'm going to station you in the next city over from Maxville. The Champions of Justice are a young team, but they should be able to help out if you'd like any advice," Halo Star said, and I bit back a smile. He clearly noticed it, and his eyes flicked down to our joined hands.

"Last important thing; you need a leader. I don't believe I would be going against anyone's inclinations if I asked Painbreaker to lead this team."

Monica let go of my hand as she jerked back as if shot.

"Are you _insane?"_ she yelled. Halo Star looked unmoved. The rest of the Council shifted awkwardly.

"I know your team will not have it very easy; there will always be those that distrust you. But I know you will make the right choices. They chose you for this."

"It's not right. It's not fair! You can't make me the leader- I've-," she sputtered to a stop, and looked over at her new teammates. Their faces were oddly blank, as if they knew what she was going to say and didn't want to give away anything.

"I've _tortured_ all of you! How the hell could you want me for a leader?" she asked.

"You _said_ you were sorry," Voidhammer pointed out.

"You've been out longer than we have," Meduka said.

"You know these heroes; we don't," Nightsteed shrugged.

"You've been _acting_ like a hero already," Flamewing said.

"You had a chance to stop Royal Pain, and you did," Bruin whispered.

"You came up with the plan in the first place," I said more loudly. "You put it together, the whole damn plan."

"I couldn't have done it without you," she protested, shaking her head.

"You risked your life to help all those people. You'll be fine," Guardian said suddenly, standing up behind me. Monica turned to look at him, blinking in shock.

"Phoenix is right, you came up with the plan," he added, and nodded at me. Monica looked from Will to me, and then back at her teammates. Finally she turned back to Halo Star, trembling, and nodded.

"Excellent. Ah…" he trailed off for a moment, seemingly a bit embarrassed, and finally pressed ahead. "I don't suppose you'd mind changing your name? Painbreaker is a little hardcore for a superhero."

The new heroes snickered, and Monica actually laughed out loud.

"I was thinking… Mercy," she said. Halo Star nodded approvingly.

"A good name. The rest you can all figure out later. I think that about wraps up- Phoenix?" he said, as I interrupted him by taking a step forward.

"I need to do something else," I said. I hadn't intended to speak, but I realized I just couldn't let this go. "Look, before ah… a month ago, I'd healed more citizens and villains than I ever had heroes. I want to change that. I _need_ to change that. Before I went to the academy, Egret made me an offer."

From the side I could see the Champions, Peaces, and Battles all looking at me as if I were insane.

"I want to take it. Not all of it; I still want to fight. But take me off my cover job; I want to split time at the Bureau hospital. I think I can help there," I said, exhaling like I'd just let go of a heavy weight. Off to the side, Mom was beaming, and I could see Layla giving me the thumbs-up sign.

"I can too," Monica- Mercy- said, reaching out to take my hand again.

Halo Star seemed stunned by that development, blinked twice, and then nodded, smiling openly.

"The Council accepts your offer, Phoenix and Mercy. And now my friends, I think we have heroics to do. Let's get to work."

I held Monica's hand as I turned to face the audience of superheroes. Some of them were beaming at the whole situation, others holding their faces in masks of neutrality, and some clearly disapproved. I watched them all with a curious peace in my heart. They were my fellow heroes, and even if they didn't really care for what the ex-villains or I had done, even if they had found the attack on the academy foolhardy, they were still on my side.

I didn't need their unstinting approval, and for once, that didn't bother me. For a long time I'd bee desperately trying to prove myself, that I could be a good hero in defiance of my dad's crimes. I'd seen veiled looks in the Bureau offices, or on the faces of other heroes, and had taken that as a personal challenge to prove my worth to everyone, or die trying.

I'd nearly killed myself in the grandmother of all heroic tasks, but I found I didn't need everyone to be happy with what I'd done. _I_ knew it had been the right choice, and so did my friends and family. I didn't need the approval of strangers, and I realized that I never did. I needed my mom, for everything she'd taught me. I needed my family, for letting me know I wasn't alone. I needed my friends, for giving me reasons to open up. And I needed Monica for showing me that anyone can change if they want to, and that even if you start out one way, you didn't have to keep going down the same road.

But I didn't need to have _everyone_ on my side, and now I wasn't angry with them for doubting me. I knew now that I was always going to be a hero, and now it was time to pass it on. And that was all I needed to know.


	49. Epilogue, Etc.

It turned out I was wrong about Zack and Magenta's wedding. They didn't get married over some weekend in Vegas with plastic rings they'd gotten out of a vending machine. It was a Tuesday afternoon in Vegas the week after the Council judgment, and they sprung for ten-dollar rings from an accessory shop. Will flew all of us all there; Ethan was the best man, and Layla was the maid of honor. The ceremony ended just in time for the Champions of Justice to help defeat Pair-A-Dice and his Gambling Goons. Magenta and Zack said they considered it the ideal honeymoon.

* * *

A little after Zack and Magenta's wedding, I was over in Westville, talking Monica through some potential kinks before her team went public. They wouldn't actually debut before they'd been able to train together, and certainly not before some of them got a better handle on their abilities, but that didn't mean Monica wasn't going to try to anticipate trouble before it started.

"Where'd they find this house?" I asked as I walked into the echoingly large Victorian that was going to serve as their headquarters. The rest of her group was still at the Maxville Bureau office, getting their promised training (and counseling) in how to better control their powers, amongst other things.

"Used to be a temporary sanctum and safe house, or so the Bureau tells me. But they're going to let us have it. Already soundproofed, reinforced walls and floors, and extra tall and wide doorways," Monica pointed out.

"For Brittany," I said in understanding. Voidhammer was tall as Chloe and built like a linebacker. I'd had several occasions where I'd banged my head on doors in Ethan's house, so I could relate a little, even if I was only a relatively shrimpy six-two.

"And Michael. Bruin," she clarified. "They want all of us to live here."

"Isn't that a little, you know, college dorm?" I asked. Granted this place was pretty damn nice, and there was tons of space, but still…

Monica shrugged. "They want us to keep an eye on each other. Make sure we don't have Super-Secret Meetings of Doom or something, I'm sure. It's supposed to be a 'team-building exercise,' I think I heard them say."

"Ouch," I winced. "Trust falls and campfire songs?"

"Well, the trust falls would work a hell of a lot better if we didn't have a gravity manipulator in our group. Besides, group home quips aside, it makes it fair for Duke. He can't leave the house."

I supposed it was a little impossible to stroll the streets when you had snakes growing out of your head.

"Hey, he came to talk to me yesterday. He wanted to see if I could fix him," I said.

"And you couldn't," she concluded from the expression on my face.

"His fire looks bright and normal to me. Except it's green," I said almost apologetically.

"Green?"

"Bright green. I guess it's because of his curse; I tried to fix it, but he scorched instead. Since I couldn't do anything, and the other doctors are stumped, they're sending him to the Beast-Tamer next," I explained.

Monica hid a laugh behind her hand.

"Oh God, I just had this mental picture of him trying to bribe his hair into submission…" she snorted, and I had to hold back laughter. I supposed it wasn't quite as funny for Duke, but still...

"No one's having second thoughts?" I asked to get her sober again.

"Not really. You know all those meetings we were having while you were recovering? That was a truly ridiculous amount of talking between the Bureau counselors and us. We were getting into… Let's just say we were getting very detailed at the end. Take Ash and Duke, for instance. I know they defected just to save their skins, but when they realized the Bureau really _wasn't_ going to use them for target practice, their change of heart became a lot more sincere. Don't get me wrong, they're still jerks a lot of the time, but now they're good jerks," she said with a sigh.

"Like Lash, Speed, and Penny." Those three were still heroes, even though most other heroes couldn't stand them. But they did keep fighting crime with admirable dedication.

"Exactly. Quint and Michael are getting training from the Pattersons-."

"Magenta's family?" I asked incredulously.

"The same. They never had formal shapeshifter training, and I was told that can be bad for the psyche. You can pick up animal instinct that can override the conscious mind if you aren't careful."

"That explains Bruin," I said soberly. I remembered hearing that he'd killed poachers in the park before Royal Pain had found him, which made a lot of sense if his bear-self was defending his territory. Magenta had never seemed to have much of a problem with her shifting, but she also never spent much time as a guinea pig either.

"Unfortunately, yes. So they're doing that. Brittany, poor girl, is trying to find a cover job. Her powers are under control, but she's having a bitch of a time trying to find a citizen job where she won't be noticed."

"What about a costumed character? You know Big Bird, Mr. Frostee, Dancing Taco…" I quipped. Monica laughed so hard she couldn't even breathe, and smacked me on the shoulder.

"You're supposed to be _helping!_ " she got out finally, collapsing on the stairs.

"You're laughing. That means I'm helping," I said, dropping next to her and draping an arm around her shoulder.

"You're horrible," she said, leaning against my shoulder slightly. "If you wouldn't mind answering a few questions _seriously_ , Mr. Peace…"

"Ok, ok," I relented. "Do you guys even have a group name yet?"

"The Redeemers."

"Shouldn't that be the Redeem _ees_?" I asked.

"Ash insisted Redeemers sounded cooler. I'm reluctantly forced to agree with him."

"Me too. What else?"

"We're supposed to start on group training next week; I don't suppose you know any place that's large, private, and non-flammable? They don't want us in Sky High."

"With Voidhammer on your team? Not surprised. What about the abandoned quarry?"

We talked for a little while about places to practice, the layout of the city, and the myriad of other little things that would make the Redeemers' introduction into the superhero world a lot easier. Monica had a lot of good ideas herself, so she mostly wanted to pick my brain about specifics in Westville and Maxville.

"You should really talk to Will and the guys about some of this," I said at once point. Monica sadly shook her head.

"Warren, really, honestly, I don't expect to get chummy with the Champions. They're _your_ friends."

"Hey, they were ok with you when I was out-."

"Because I refused to leave and they couldn't make me go. We reached a truce eventually, and that's about it. I think we're going to work together ok, but I really don't expect to get invited to movie nights all the time. Or any time," she said frankly, looking straight into my eyes.

"I don't want to hide you," I shot back, and could feel heat momentarily flash along my hands.

"I'm not asking you to. But don't force it. Either they'll like me or they won't, so don't try to drag me along to everything just because you think you can. Or I'll hurt you bad," she warned.

"Ok, ok," I conceded, but pulled her closer against me.

"Besides, I don't want the Redeemers to think I'm too good to hang out with them either. They aren't exactly going to have a ton of friends lined up. Things are going to be hard, and I just want to make sure they don't feel abandoned. There's enough going against them as it is," she said.

"It's all right. Listen to you; you sound like Will does sometimes."

"I hope that's a compliment!" she said with a playful swat at my knee.

"Will's a great guy. I think you're going to do just fine at this leadership thing," I promised.

"Why weren't you ever the leader anyway? Some people on your websites say you're really the driving force behind your team," she asked, hiding a smile.

"Logistics," I said, studiously ignoring the websites comment. "Will's tailor-made for leadership; look who his parents are!"

"Don't confuse the issue with facts," she muttered, and I laughed.

"Hey, I just had one more question before I have to get back to work. We're supposed to meet with the other heroes in Westville and have a sort of get-together; have cocktails, and plot out each other's strengths and weaknesses-."

"To make sure you guys aren't just going to rob a bank and then skip town," I added, and Monica nodded, rolling her eyes slightly.

"I knew this was coming up eventually. I don't expect the mayor to welcome us with a ticker-tape parade, but I'd like to get the other heroes on our side. So, costumes or no costumes?"

"No costumes," I suggested. "You guys are all built for intimidation. Try to look-."

"If you say 'innocent,' I'm going to laugh in your face," she warned.

"I was going to say 'less threatening,'" I assured her.

"Hmph. We'll work on that. Well, I already am working on it; Mercy has a new costume. I need to move my things out of my old Maxville apartment and into here. Don't suppose you'd be able to help me with that tonight, would you?" she asked hopefully.

I think the blood rushed out of my head. That would leave her and me, in her apartment, alone. We were no longer in the academy. That nebulous "perfect time" we'd been waiting for was pretty much here.

"I can haul boxes with the best of them," I said nonchalantly.

"I need some help in fitting my new costume too, if you'd be up for it." Her tone was extremely casual, but she did have one hand resting on my knee.

"I can definitely do that," I promised.

 _Bow-chicka-wah-wah,_ my brain snarked.

 _Shut. Up._ I replied.

* * *

About three weeks after I'd changed my own job description, the Bureau director called a meeting with me. I had been so busy between working with the Champions, working at the Bureau hospital, and helping Monica with the Redeemers that I hadn't realized who'd taken over from Director Adams. It had been on one of those vague "I should really do something about that," lists that I just hadn't go around to.

So I was pretty damn surprised when Veronica Powers stood up behind the large director's desk. I was less pleasantly surprised when I realized that now-Director Powers must have taken a bad claw-slash to the face before I'd started on my "healing rampage." (That was Zack's term for it.) Three heavy dark red furrows slashed across her forehead to her jaw, from left to right, going right over the eye. Actually, her right eye was dark red as well, an unfortunate side effect, though it seemed she could see out of it.

"Director?" I asked incredulously.

"Of course Phoenix," she said, and waived for me to sit.

"If you're here, who's at Sky High?"

"Mr. Boy took over from me. He's gained a lot more self-confidence since your junior year," she said with a bit of a smile.

I nodded, surprised, as she came over to sit next to me. Unlike Director Adams, she didn't want the barrier of the desk between her and me.

"This isn't tiring you out too much, this pulling double duty?" she asked.

"I've gotten a hell of a lot better at budgeting myself," I promised.

And that was the honest truth. Monica and I had talked with Dr. Egret and decided that doing what we'd done as EMTs, partially healing people, would be a lot more useful than risking burning someone up on a full healing. I didn't try to completely fix anyone now, but instead we'd try to shave days to weeks off of his or her recovery time. That kept me from overextending, and heroes from thinking they were totally invulnerable. If coming back from something serious involved no real effort on their part, they might forget to be cautious. In that respect, I agreed completely with Monica's assessment that a little leftover pain was a good reminder to duck next time!

"I've noticed. Dr. Egret's very pleased with how things are going, and she's really happy with Mercy's help too. There are too many of us that have odd reactions to medications; we could have used someone with her abilities decades ago. Between you two, our turn-around time for injured heroes is dropping considerably. I'm guessing in a few months we won't be short-handed anymore."

With eight recent superhero deaths, and the dissolution of the academy and the attendant chaos their villains were trying to cause in retaliation, even the introduction of the Redeemers wouldn't cover all the gaps. Cutter's Crew hadn't resurfaced, but when they did it was going to be nasty. Every single person was going to be needed, and I was going to be able to help with that big picture.

"Thanks," I said, not really sure on what else to say.

"The Champions are also doing very well. No problems with getting back into the groove?" she asked.

"Like riding a bicycle," I assured her.

Even though I'd been away from fighting for close to a month, it had been comfortingly easy to slide back into my role as Phoenix, member of the Champions of Justice. The difference was now my days weren't on such a wacky schedule any more because of my cover job. Monica and I had quietly said good-bye to Medic-Co, and had entered a much more reasonable schedule as superhero health specialists. Granted, heroes didn't get hurt on a nine-to-five basis, but that meant they only called us in when they needed us. Which sometimes translated into having actual free time now and again. It was a novel experience.

"Glad to hear it. Phoenix, I didn't drag you down here just for a chat, though I am starting an open-door policy. Director Adams liked his privacy, but I'm more used to getting everyone's opinion. Pass that along, would you? And walk with me a bit," she said, suddenly standing.

I shoved myself up to follow her as we wove through the cube farm of the Bureau offices, to a half-hidden elevator at the back. I noticed the Director had to use her palm print to get it to open.

"There are a few changes I'm making to Bureau policies. Nothing really world-shaking, but a few things brought up by the academy's defeat, and a few old traditions that really don't make sense anymore. Ah, before I forget, I wanted to tell you about the technopaths while you're here. Techarcana vetted them, and they're going to work for us. The academy had some amazing defenses on its computer systems, and we could use something like that on our own," she said as we waited patiently for the elevator.

"They're all doing ok?" I asked.

"Very well. They became quite normal once away from the psychics' interference. We also managed, with their help, to trace the route Saurian Lord used to bring his nanobots into Metroplex. We've never had to deal with a nanobot manipulator before, but we finally managed to plug that hole in our security, thanks to them."

"What about Royal Pain?"

The Director sighed as the door swooshed open, and didn't reply until it had shut again. The elevator slowly moved downward as she considered her words.

"Insanity is not unusual amongst incarcerated supervillains. And developing a disorder, if they didn't have one already, is also not unusual. They're under surveillance, but many villains hide their symptoms well, even from their sessions with trained psychics. To be frank, Royal Pain is off her rocker. She's being treated, and we hope for the best, but she's too dangerous and too intelligent to be moved out of power-containment. Her sentence has been amended with her most recent crimes, and she will never, ever leave Metroplex."

"Good," I said with finality. I maybe felt just the tiniest bit sorry for Royal Pain. But not much. Not in the face of what she'd done.

The elevator finally stopped and the doors swung open.

It revealed a large, bare room lit only by a few spotlights, dominated by a single large pillar in the center, surrounded by stone benches. The Director and I stepped towards the pillar, our footsteps slapping loudly on the stone. From a distance the pillar appeared to be textured, or perhaps carved abstractly. Close up, it was apparent that it was carved with hundreds of names. _The Iron Fist, Red Falcon, Tower Guard …_ Row upon row of names, stretching to the ceiling twenty feet above. _Diamond, Seawalker, Iceangel, Cool Cross, Sonic Boom…_

"This is the Superheroes' Memorial, the private one," Director Power said quietly. It was the sort of room that demanded you speak in hushed tones. "It used to be only the directors, Council members, and principals could get down here. Kane, Director Adams, once told me that it was because people might misunderstand seeing all of this at once."

"Why?" I asked, reaching out hesitantly to touch it.

"I don't really know. Let me show you something. Sonic Boom," she called out more loudly. Hidden projectors in the ceiling began to display pictures on all four of the blank white walls. It was every picture, every article, and every fan letter that Sonic Boom had ever gotten, right up until his memorial article from the day he died.

I'd seen other superheroes' memorials before, and war memorials, and accident memorials too. All of them had an air of tragic grandeur about them, the long list of names providing most of the impact. But here you had not only the names, but also everything about every person who'd ever had their names inscribed on the column. Everyone was in here, just waiting to be called out again.

I hesitated on seeing Boomer's face on every wall, and took a steadying breath.

"You didn't send Boomer to his death, Warren," Veronica said, dropping my superhero name in a relaxing of the most formal Bureau protocol. I glanced sharply at her, wondering if she was reading my mind. I had told myself I wasn't going to let those deaths weigh on me, but I still sometimes thought…

"You didn't," she repeated. "He knew it was a huge risk, going active again, and he knew it was very possible, even probable, that he wouldn't come back. I saw the most ridiculous grin on his face when he stopped Son of Silver. And I…"

She hesitated before starting again.

"I really hate Son of Silver. I have a grudge against him; he's killed several of my friends," she said baldly. "I was about to do a very spectacular, messy, and probably foolish kamikaze attack on Silver when the call went out for Sonic Boom. Every time we've gone up against Silver directly, we've lost someone. Boomer kept the deaths down to a minimum. He knew exactly what he was doing when he went into that fight."

I breathed out again slowly.

"I tried to go after Cutter when I saw what she did to Boomer, and got blindsided by Talon. Nearly lost the eye before you started healing," she said, and sat down on one of the benches. I followed suit, eyes still nailed on the pillar.

"Diamond," I called, and the images obediently switched to those of a heroine made of living gems.

While Powers waited, I went through the list of those heroes that had been killed during the academy attack, supplying the names of those few I hadn't known. It was strangely therapeutic, seeing everyone's faces in smiling publicity photos, rather than remembering how they must have been in their moment of death.

When I'd gone through the last name, she spoke again.

"I'm opening this place up to all heroes. It used to be just so the bigwigs could remember their responsibilities. But I think it's worth more than that. Everyone needs to remember the good things about their friends and fellow heroes," she said, and stood. "I'm telling you first, because I think you needed it first."

"Thanks Veronica," I said, and stood up as the projectors went dark.

"Anytime Phoenix. Come on," she said, heading back to the elevator. "You have a good head on your shoulders. You should remember to make suggestions to me from time to time; I don't mind listening to something different."

I turned my head away slightly to hide a smile. Clearly she'd wished I'd been able to tell more people about Monica's plan, so I wouldn't have had to sneak around so much. She wanted to be in the loop. I had a feeling there would be some unspecified unfortunate consequences if I went rogue like that again.

"Will do," I promised. I knew now that I could trust people; I hadn't known that before.

"Excellent," she said, and palmed the elevator control. We rode up in silence, and I could see her slightly turning the scarred side of her face away from the rest of the office as the doors swooshed open at the top.

"I'll see you later," she said, and I spoke before she could get too far away.

"Hey Comet!" She stopped in her tracks and turned back to me.

"You look pretty bad-ass," I said, smiling broadly.

Her returning grin was brilliantly white.

* * *

"Warren, I really need your help," Will pleaded.

It was going on three months since the academy fight, and I'd thought things were going pretty well. Mercy and the Redeemers had made a quiet and effective debut in Westville, neatly stopping a daring double bank robbery. They hadn't been welcomed with open arms, but neither had they been stoned from the gates. That was as good as they'd hoped for and better than they'd feared. Monica was determined to build on that.

The Champions of Justice were keeping up their own impressive record, and there'd been no major crises for a while. I couldn't think of what was bringing such a note of panic into Will's voice, particularly in public. He'd run into me coming out of the Bureau hospital (I'd been dropping off Trixie for her new gig as a therapy pet), and had literally dragged me into a deserted hallway for something of, apparently, dire importance.

"Stronghold, calm the hell down. What's going on?" I asked.

"It's… Chloe and Ethan were over at our house, and they're getting ready for their wedding, and Chloe wanted Layla's opinion on flowers, and-," he stopped himself from babbling with a wrench of effort. "I need to get a ring."

"Ok… so why don't you just go with Layla to get it?" I asked reasonably. It was about damn time for Will to propose. I was more surprised it had taken him this long to do it!

"I wanted it to be a surprise," he said, looking sheepish.

"You two have been destined for each other since birth. Unless there's someone else I don't know about, I'd say it's safe to assume she's going to know," I said.

"No, that's not it. I just had this plan…"

"What about Magenta? I don't know squat about engagement rings."

"Magenta would tell," Will said positively.

"Stronghold," I warned in exasperation.

"At least we'll both be equally clueless!" Will said.

"Isn't dragging a friend along to something like this a chick thing?" I asked, smirking.

"Warren! This is really important!" Will almost growled.

"Dude, I know. Trust me," I said. I wasn't exactly as ignorant of engagement rings as I'd let on. I'd been subtly checking out Monica's reactions to rings whenever there was a jewelry store ad on TV.

"I'm just freaking out a little," Will said with a sigh.

"You can use a skyscraper as a baseball bat, but are freaking out about a ring?" I asked.

"Let's see how you like it when it's your turn," Will muttered. Then he caught the thoughtful look on my face and verbally pounced. "Come on, it's going to be pretty soon, isn't it?"

Though I hadn't taken Monica along to every get-together I had with my friends, Will and the gang had been remarkably cool about purposefully extending an invitation to her every now and then. Though they were still a little reserved around her, she was actually starting to get to know them and like them. I think almost against their will, my friends were starting to like her too. As I'd predicted, she got along great with Magenta.

"Probably before your wedding, knowing what Layla has planned," I pointed out.

"She's reading bridal magazines," Will confessed. I got alarmed.

"Stronghold, we better go _now_ before _she_ proposes to _you,_ " I said, starting to walk towards the doors.

"So, this isn't a chick thing anymore?" Will asked.

"No, now it's male bonding," I said, palming open the doors. "Are we flying or driving?'

"Flying. I needed this ring, like, yesterday," Will said, ducking us both down an alley so we'd have a protected take-off point.

I thought for a second how Monica would take me showing up with an engagement ring tonight. Then I realized I probably needed a ring yesterday too. I loved her and she loved me; I should have done this a long time ago. This was going to be great.

"Ok Stronghold, let's hit the sky!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mega Author's Notes and Thanks
> 
> This story has been nearly two years in the making, and I have a lot of thanks to give to a lot of people.
> 
> Thanks to the writers, directors, cast, and crew of Sky High, for without them I wouldn't have had a springboard for my tale. Thanks to Disney for distributing, for the Almighty Mouse reaches far and wide.
> 
> Thanks to my husband for having me watch Sky High in the first place.
> 
> Thanks to my beta readers, MrRigger of this community, and my sister BrightEyed-Jill of the LiveJournal community. MrRigger, thanks for being a sounding board. BrightEyed-Jill gets a special shout-out for many late-night phone conversations and chats about plots, plot holes, and characterizations.
> 
> Thanks to my reviewers, especially all you multi-chapter long-term reviewers who stuck with me for so long. Thanks especially to those who asked questions, wrote detailed reviews, pointed out errors, or postulated on plots. You helped improve the quality of my story, and your reviews always made my day. Virtual hugs!
> 
> Thanks to my dad for keeping his Marvel comic collection from his childhood; there's nothing like the classics! Dad also gets the credit for teaching me how to play Dungeons and Dragons. That was invaluable for this story!
> 
> I also want to thank my co-workers, who involuntarily and quite unwittingly, donated their names for some bit parts. If you ever end up reading this, for the love of Bob, don't run me over with a forktruck. I love you all, and you know it.
> 
> No writer creates in a vacuum, and I have many inspirations to list too.
> 
> For political plotting and convoluted widgets, I turned to Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire, and Mistress of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts.
> 
> For character-driven introspection, I turned to my favorite author, Mercedes Lackey.
> 
> For villain/hero relationships and how they can each change the other, I turned to Silence of the Lambs and especially Hannibal, by Thomas Harris.
> 
> For my mental soundtrack, I thank the works of Linkin Park and Nickleback. The themes and lyrics of many of their songs aided in writing some emotional scenes.
> 
> For my disturbing mental soundtrack, the music I used when writing the academy chapters, I turned to AKLO (dot) net, the music of the Cthulhu Mythos. Crazy strange awesome!
> 
> For quips and witty comebacks, I thank Monty Python and the Holy Grail, my D&D gaming group, and the ever-snarky Television Without Pity.
> 
> For writing action scenes with super-powered people, I turn to my near-decade of experience with Dungeons and Dragons Role-Playing Game. For those that have played in my games, I thank your innovation that kept me on my toes. Trying to describe the crazy stuff you did helped me beyond measure. Gary Gygax, this one's for you.
> 
> Seventh Sanctum also gets a shout-out for their Superhero Name Generator, which was quite a help when I was stuck.


End file.
